PC What can be done for game balance?

[Vedui]

I might be the odd man out, but I actually like the slower progression. I do think it needs some further updates to make it feel smoother.

1) More weapon parts. I end up day 7, and the only weapon I have I bought from trader. I can make a Q2 shotgun, Q2 stun baton, but I have no parts for either.

2) More steel. Right now a lot of crafted weapons/armor require steel, which is locked behind very rare finds (and rare wrenching specific items). Crucible is way further down the line. So by the time I find weapon/armor parts, I got the perks, but I don't have steel.

Doing 1+2 would help allow for a smoother progression, so while you might not find weapons or better armour around, you can start crafting it so YOU're the one behind the progression, as opposed to as what I do now, just run trader quests, get money, and buy the damned weapons from trader joel

 

[RipClaw]

When you are scavenger and suddenly builder in your team starts placing those cubes instead of normal structures for example. Kinda breaks immersion, doesn't it?

That players can make blocks and vehicles appear from thin air does not break your immersion ? Good thing I don't care about immersion. I'd have to ignore a lot to believe a world like this exists.

You can also just talk to people when something bothers you. And if you are not tolerant enough to accept that other players use cheese bases then maybe you should play single player instead.
 

 

[meganoth]

I might be the odd man out, but I actually like the slower progression. I do think it needs some further updates to make it feel smoother.

1) More weapon parts. I end up day 7, and the only weapon I have I bought from trader. I can make a Q2 shotgun, Q2 stun baton, but I have no parts for either.

2) More steel. Right now a lot of crafted weapons/armor require steel, which is locked behind very rare finds (and rare wrenching specific items). Crucible is way further down the line. So by the time I find weapon/armor parts, I got the perks, but I don't have steel.

Doing 1+2 would help allow for a smoother progression, so while you might not find weapons or better armour around, you can start crafting it so YOU're the one behind the progression, as opposed to as what I do now, just run trader quests, get money, and buy the damned weapons from trader joel

One of the materials I see very frequently at the trader is steel. You probably can't get enough to craft everything you want but anything you prioritize

 

[Vedui]

One of the materials I see very frequently at the trader is steel. You probably can't get enough to craft everything you want but anything you prioritize

That is true. But if you're going to buy steel to craft, that's very close to simply just buying the weapon from the trader to begin with. So I think due to the need of steel, an increase in that being found would be helpful and not unbalancing. Just a bit more here and there would do it.

 

[Ezed]

I didn't really play A18  but after several A19 playthroughs (ranging from Days 30-50) it is my opinion there is far too much loot and/or opportunities to loot these days.  For me, crafting isn't really required as I can find almost everything I need/want in loot or as quest rewards or simply purchasing with proceeds from selling all the unwanted loot.  

Weapons parts being so scarce plays a factor in this lack of crafting I think.  So many weapon types, when I do find some parts they're seldom the ones I'm looking for.  Good profit in them though at least.

Another thing I find myself doing is skipping the 'Iron Age' since Purple (T6) weapons. tools and armour (WTA) are so plentiful, and for me at least, mod slots rule all.  I'm not going to giving up 2 mod slots on my wooden club as it's working well enough.

I could stop questing and looting POI's to reduce my loot intake...but there's not much else to do.  I'd like to see more wandering hordes during the week, increasing in frequency as the days progress.  I know I could build a base but then I'd likely have to mine some resources, which I don't want to do until I get steel tools and max my mother load for best efficiency.  I find mining a bit brain numbing and would rather kill zombies for XP.

In summary...

-less loot/loot containers

-more weapon parts

-maybe limit Stone Age WTA to Tier 1 or 3 so it encourages Iron Age crafting of T4-5 stuff

-more zombies in the world (spawn me some hordes for fun and to break the repetitiveness of POI farming)

 

[Solomon]

Turning the screen black because the player glitches through the world is not a fix but a workaround for a problem that is only present in PvP. In PvE this problem has no major impact and turning the screen black would be pointless.

Ignorance is bliss. If you don't see the 300 other bugs in the game which might be more important to TFP than this one then yes, it cast a bad light on the devs. The developers have different priorities than any one player has.

I dont know that specific bug or many bugs, i just talked from a general point of view. We can always say that devs have different priorities and such but every time some modder fixes an issue people are going to think that the devs dont understand their own game or just doesnt prioritize as how they should.

I mean sure yeah its the devs doing most of the work but when you are loading in mods to finally get the gameplay you want you start to question why the devs have not yet done X and you cannot avoid this issue because what they see and what the devs see are 2 different things.

Currently im in favor for drastically increasing the sandbox capatibilities of a player and adding in content to the days between horde nights, if that means we gonna lose 20% of the playerbase due to sudden ram/vram usage increase and others then perhaps its time to optimize the game.

 

[JCrook1028]

Just gotta love it when they are out of arguments and invoke the 'mod it' card. 

Yep, gotta love the truth. The off the main track gameplay styles are always going to be for mods to implement. The example above of turning graphics way way down in order to have a ton more zombies is a perfect illustration.

 

[Boidster]

The core argument was from Boidster: "TFP has to leave the defaults pretty tame so that the "minimum" specs will still play". Are you able to counter that with real arguments?

My only point anyhow was that the minimum # of zombies can easily be adjusted to suit your PC's strength. There is literally no way TFP could set a "default" value that would satisfy all people and all machine configurations. Did not mean to start an argument about how modders > developers or whatever FFS. It's like three lines in an XML file. Hardly a week-long after-you-get-home-from-your-9-to-5-job programming odyssey.

That is true. But if you're going to buy steel to craft, that's very close to simply just buying the weapon from the trader to begin with. So I think due to the need of steel, an increase in that being found would be helpful and not unbalancing. Just a bit more here and there would do it.

As soon as I find a wrench I put "street lamps" at or near the top of my target list. 1-2 steel from each one and there are dozens of them in a mid-size town. Enough to get at least a few early-game things built. But hey I modded radiators into refrigerators and the Ice Cold Beer coolers so I could get some more brass. I'd be fine with steel coming from one or two additional blocks.

 

[meganoth]

I dont know that specific bug or many bugs, i just talked from a general point of view. We can always say that devs have different priorities and such but every time some modder fixes an issue people are going to think that the devs dont understand their own game or just doesnt prioritize as how they should.

I mean sure yeah its the devs doing most of the work but when you are loading in mods to finally get the gameplay you want you start to question why the devs have not yet done X and you cannot avoid this issue because what they see and what the devs see are 2 different things.

Currently im in favor for drastically increasing the sandbox capatibilities of a player and adding in content to the days between horde nights, if that means we gonna lose 20% of the playerbase due to sudden ram/vram usage increase and others then perhaps its time to optimize the game.

As you said "to get the gameplay YOU want". There is the answer to why they haven't done X if you accept that they want different things than you. That is obviously true with the decor items and your idea of drastically increasing the sandbox capabilities. TFP themselves seem to think they are about right where they are and all the factions (pvp-players, shooter-players, builders, sandbox-players, survivalists) here in the forum try to tug them in their direction. Maybe you should be glad they don't listen to such requests because maybe the shooter fraction is bigger than the sandbox fraction, who knows?

Don't get me wrong, it is definitely possible that some modder finds a better solution for a particular problem or bug than TFP. This is nothing earth-shattering, developers and modders come from the same pool of people that are interested and sometimes competent in games development. Some of them were even hired by TFP. Gazz for example was initially a 7D2D modder I think, also madmole himself started as modder for bethesda games. But so what, TFP can't go around and sift the mods for solutions to their problems, because they have different problems and ideas and different constraints.

It is the exception that a mod provides a solution, mods are usually changing a thing TFP wants to a thing TFP does not want. Bigger backpack mods anyone?

 

[Slingblade2040]

the thing with the AI is that no one really cares for zombies that are smart enough to take the easy path to you. just let them be brain dead like they see you they come at you somethinf basic and for horde nights random spawns to come at you from any direction. this whole we don't want folks to cheese horde night or avoid it has become an issue that is taking away from bettering this game. like I respect all the work put into bettering the AI and how great the zombie pathing has become but any more improvements towards that should wait till bandits are implemented or worked on during test builds. 

 I can understand wanting the Bandits or whatever human type entities are added later to have some kind of intelligence but for zombies or even animals they don't need to be that smart. 

also TFP need to focus their balance towards single player. I know this game has multiplayer  and people play multiplayer but balance for multiplayer need's to be on the admins who run those servers.  This game will never be balanced for both single player and multiplayer. much less adding in perks or items with multiplayer in mind.  Focus on single player balance and let server admins worry about the multiplayer side of things. 

 

[Solomon]

As you said "to get the gameplay YOU want". There is the answer to why they haven't done X if you accept that they want different things than you. That is obviously true with the decor items and your idea of drastically increasing the sandbox capabilities. TFP themselves seem to think they are about right where they are and all the factions (pvp-players, shooter-players, builders, sandbox-players, survivalists) here in the forum try to tug them in their direction. Maybe you should be glad they don't listen to such requests because maybe the shooter fraction is bigger than the sandbox fraction, who knows?

Don't get me wrong, it is definitely possible that some modder finds a better solution for a particular problem or bug than TFP. This is nothing earth-shattering, developers and modders come from the same pool of people that are interested and sometimes competent in games development. Some of them were even hired by TFP. Gazz for example was initially a 7D2D modder I think, also madmole himself started as modder for bethesda games. But so what, TFP can't go around and sift the mods for solutions to their problems, because they have different problems and ideas and different constraints.

Honestly i want more weapons not just shooters, weapon grade axes, swords, more variants of knifes, maces, hell i would accept an exo-suit too seeing how we can just fabricate these auto-turrets soo easily.

I generally want a lot of things improved what are all key parts of this game:

1. Basebuilding what needs much more blocks and trap mechanisms
   
2. Weapons because one of the main focus is fighting the dead
   
3. Fixing stealth because its stupid that we have perks what are utterly useless on the horde nights
   
4. Adding more zombie variants
   
5. Ai variation (i believe the mix of the old AI and new AI would be perfect)
   

These i all believe are core parts of the game, basebuilding feels great when you have the sandbox expanded for it. Weapons are best when they come in variations (i love the stun baton but why its alone). Perks are best when they all have clear functions what work every time.

I also would love them to listen more because i still remember how many games like Firefall (RIP) died because the devs thought better than their players. Surely not everything needs to be listened to but their possiblities can be expanded like for example remember how i said i would love to have all these decorative blocks to be craftable/takeable? Why not make it a server option like tick this in and your game now gets a lot of stuff you can craft and another can set in who gets to decide if you can craft these or not.

It is the exception that a mod provides a solution, mods are usually changing a thing TFP wants to a thing TFP does not want. Bigger backpack mods anyone?

Im using a stackmod. It makes this last stage of the game much better.

 

[meganoth]

Honestly i want more weapons not just shooters, weapon grade axes, swords, more variants of knifes, maces, hell i would accept an exo-suit too seeing how we can just fabricate these auto-turrets soo easily.

I generally want a lot of things improved what are all key parts of this game:

1. Basebuilding what needs much more blocks and trap mechanisms
   
2. Weapons because one of the main focus is fighting the dead
   
3. Fixing stealth because its stupid that we have perks what are utterly useless on the horde nights
   
4. Adding more zombie variants
   
5. Ai variation (i believe the mix of the old AI and new AI would be perfect)
   

These i all believe are core parts of the game, basebuilding feels great when you have the sandbox expanded for it. Weapons are best when they come in variations (i love the stun baton but why its alone). Perks are best when they all have clear functions what work every time.

I also would love them to listen more because i still remember how many games like Firefall (RIP) died because the devs thought better than their players. Surely not everything needs to be listened to but their possiblities can be expanded like for example remember how i said i would love to have all these decorative blocks to be craftable/takeable? Why not make it a server option like tick this in and your game now gets a lot of stuff you can craft and another can set in who gets to decide if you can craft these or not.

Im using a stackmod. It makes this last stage of the game much better.

The games development cycle is on its last leg. Sure, that last leg will take another 1-2 years but some of the things you listed will probably be delegated to the next version or an expansion because there is only time for bandits, the story and a handful of other stuff that can be done in the sidelines.

So basebuilding and weapons are nearly finished, there will be pipe weapons and maybe another melee weapon for INT. Fixing stealth for hordenight might be possible, a few boss zombies seem to be in the pipeline and I don't think the AI will change much.

You want them to listen more. Sure, how about they listen to me .  I want (in that order) legendary weapons, the AI largely unchanged and the event system that was talked about. The community is not speaking with a single voice and there are often opposite voices coming from there. And it doesn't mean you have some majority behind you if a few people in a thread have the same opinion as you, threads tend to collect like-minded people.

A thing about options. Developers don't like to add options and definitely not early in development. Because they have to support all possible combination of options which can get complicated sometimes. They want to add them as late as possible if at all. Sure it is somewhat late now in alpha but there still are features in development. I'm talking about beta late. So you can wait until the real beta polishing starts and a few options are added or you can play immediately with all deco blocks by using a mod. Just saying, you are fighting an uphill battle.

 

[Vedui]

A lot of things sound simple if you're not the one doing them. =P

Difficulty modifiers for biomes and POI are on the list but not done, yet. /shrug

We do have "simple" and "harder" POI's but I agree biome addition to challenge ratings would make sense. We sort of have a harder time in wasteland already, but further ways to make it harder would be good, higher level zombies in dangerous areas and better loot. Still just the added wasteland stuff of always respawning zombies at night etc goes some distance to achieve this for now, so thanks for that!

 

[myrkana]

It's obvious slot of stuff in this game isn't balanced. TFP recently tried and let's be honest sorta failed with this whole stone age nonsense. also don't come into this with self imposing rules and other nonsense like that. if you set up your own rules to play this game that's on you and with those rules the game is borderline no longer vanilla. 

The trader and quests are one of the issues that kills off the balance since they have become very easy to find, getting about 10k dukes by the end of day 3 isn't an issue and usual they have some really decent guns as high as tier 3. not to mention how much experience you gain by selling all those items.

loot rooms..those things are just dumb and after running a few PoIs you know how to get to them and in the easiest way possible. they should just be removed or saved for the tower style PoIs. personally I'd prefer for them to be removed from the game.

the perk system. it's fairly easy to max out a attribute and a damage perk by level 19. you can get very OP by day 7.  especially if you find the item that gives you an extra attribute point for the tree you are going into it makes getting OP that much faster. 

obviously a lot can be done to better balance this game. certain things can be added back in and changed a bit to work better with the current perk and book system. obviously no one is talking about bringing back spam crafting so don't even bring up that nonsense.

loot can go back to being a bit more random or having higher tier's show up according to gamestage.

also I really wouldn't mind the return of feral or radiated zombies showing up at certain PoIs no matter what gamestage you are at or even during horde nights. a bit of randomness to horde night would be great to add some kind of element of danger. 

those are just my thoughts. feel free to add in your issues and what you think could balance this game for the better. even though it will probably be ignored.

I dont think they're going for super balance right now seeing as not all the systems are in place yet. Why balance just to rebalance 5 more times as they add in the final systems? 

Traders are going to be redone/balanced whatever. It's all ready on the list.

Some non dungeon pois would be nice but also not every dungeon poi's room is in the top or bottom of the house. I've found a few where it's in an odd spot, they're constantly adding more pois so you cant remember every single one. Also once they add the biome modifiers it might be better to just go thorugh the maze depending on what exactly replaces the irradiated zombies.

So by level 19 you can do damage with 1 weapon really well? Cool... what else can you do?

Higher stuff per gamestage will be brought in with the biome modifiers they plan to add later. This will also apply to certain pois I hope, I believe I read this is true but dont quote me on it. 

 

[Solomon]

The games development cycle is on its last leg. Sure, that last leg will take another 1-2 years but some of the things you listed will probably be delegated to the next version or an expansion because there is only time for bandits, the story and a handful of other stuff that can be done in the sidelines.

So basebuilding and weapons are nearly finished, there will be pipe weapons and maybe another melee weapon for INT. Fixing stealth for hordenight might be possible, a few boss zombies seem to be in the pipeline and I don't think the AI will change much.

You want them to listen more. Sure, how about they listen to me .  I want (in that order) legendary weapons, the AI largely unchanged and the event system that was talked about. The community is not speaking with a single voice and there are often opposite voices coming from there. And it doesn't mean you have some majority behind you if a few people in a thread have the same opinion as you, threads tend to collect like-minded people.

Last development cycle as in leaving EA? If thats the case im seriously disappointed in this game and its developers, this game is still soo empty at best i would put it from Alpha to Beta considering just how much more it needs to be done.

Basebuilding literally degraded into AI pathing abuse VS "look how wide i can make this wall", there are not real weapon variety ingame because it just boils down into 1 melee you because you specced into that perk tree and whatever gun you can take because you need all that ranged options on the horde nights.

Theres just soo much in this game what would need polish, more content and balancing it feels like as if this was the literal first version released.

 

[meganoth]

Last development cycle as in leaving EA? If thats the case im seriously disappointed in this game and its developers, this game is still soo empty at best i would put it from Alpha to Beta considering just how much more it needs to be done.

Basebuilding literally degraded into AI pathing abuse VS "look how wide i can make this wall", there are not real weapon variety ingame because it just boils down into 1 melee you because you specced into that perk tree and whatever gun you can take because you need all that ranged options on the horde nights.

Theres just soo much in this game what would need polish, more content and balancing it feels like as if this was the literal first version released.

Are you sure you understand what Beta is? Beta means only bug and balancing fixes, the last step before releasing. There should be nearly no new content in the beta phase, no filling up. You probably don't want beta any earlier.

The other misconception you may have is about the size of the company doing the game. Are you aware that TFP is a small indie-developer with just ~20-30 employees, only a handful of them programmers, far below what AAA-developers have in manpower? And they have made a game with a fully destructible voxel world down to bedrock, that feature alone probably cost them 20-30% of their development resources.

I'm pretty sure now you will be disappointed by the next alpha, and the next, and the release version as well.

About weapon variety. Guns shoot, in the game you have guns that do damage to single enemies and guns with area damage. What additional guns do you want and how would they really make a difference to gameplay?

 

[Boidster]

Last development cycle as in leaving EA? If thats the case im seriously disappointed in this game and its developers, this game is still soo empty at best i would put it from Alpha to Beta considering just how much more it needs to be done.

Basebuilding literally degraded into AI pathing abuse VS "look how wide i can make this wall", there are not real weapon variety ingame because it just boils down into 1 melee you because you specced into that perk tree and whatever gun you can take because you need all that ranged options on the horde nights.

Theres just soo much in this game what would need polish, more content and balancing it feels like as if this was the literal first version released.

Sounds like you really just don't like the game very much and probably won't like it very much going forward as a) the AI will always be abusable if people choose to play that way and b) you aren't going to get a bunch more guns. Not in vanilla anyway. If you don't like using mods then you're stuck with a game you don't like very much. Maybe it's time to move on to something you do enjoy?

 

[Solomon]

Are you sure you understand what Beta is? Beta means only bug and balancing fixes, the last step before releasing. There should be nearly no new content in the beta phase, no filling up. You probably don't want beta any earlier.

The other misconception you may have is about the size of the company doing the game. Are you aware that TFP is a small indie-developer with just ~20-30 employees, only a handful of them programmers, far below what AAA-developers have in manpower? And they have made a game with a fully destructible voxel world down to bedrock, that feature alone probably cost them 20-30% of their development resources.

I'm pretty sure now you will be disappointed by the next alpha, and the next, and the release version as well.

Thats why i asked what you exactly mean with last development cycle, normally each development cycle goes like apha->beta->first finished release.

If its the next alpha then im gonna wait for it but you made it sound like the devs are pleased with everything as is now and ready themselves to leave ea.

About weapon variety. Guns shoot, in the game you have guns that do damage to single enemies and guns with area damage.

Im thinking im giving off the wrong impression or you guys project something on me but i dont just need more guns, i think the game needs more weapons in general melee involved.

Lets see from the top of my head some melee weapons i would like to see ingame:

1. Swords, the age old classics (brass, iron and steel)
   
2. War axes because axes being just tools dont make sense (brass, iron and steel)
   
3. Various Pikes and their kind (this here is atleast 4 weapons each with 3 types brass, iron and steel)
   
4. Maces and hatchets aka the smaller version of clubs, sledgehammers and axes ( 2 weapons again with the 3 material type variants each)
   
5. Shields because it makes sense to try to cover yourself from getting bitten ( 5 weapons with 5 material types)
   
6. Tazer and other intellect weapons (atleast 4 weapons)
   

After this we can go onto ranged weapons with the classics still not ingame:

1. Flamethrower, pretty old choice of killing against the undead
   
2. Grenade launcher, the small brother of the rocket launcher
   
3. Heavy crossbow for when you need your dead as ornament on the wall
   
4. Repeater crossbow when you need those shots fast
   
5. Longbow when you cant be bothered with getting a crossbow
   

Now that i recount it i would like to see more melee weapons than guns in general. 

What additional guns do you want and how would they really make a difference to gameplay?

Okay just explain to me what you actually mean here because if we go with this logic we wouldnt need neither the auto shotgun nor the m60 because they dont actually make any big difference in gameplay.

You shoot faster and like thats it, in fact if we follow this logic we dont even need this many melee weapons because all of them is just a variant of the club except the spear what is an actual hybrid.

Sounds like you really just don't like the game very much and probably won't like it very much going forward as a) the AI will always be abusable if people choose to play that way and b) you aren't going to get a bunch more guns. Not in vanilla anyway. If you don't like using mods then you're stuck with a game you don't like very much. Maybe it's time to move on to something you do enjoy?

Ohh i do enjoy my time in A18, A19? Well that not soo much.

Like many have said before me, it feels like the original premise of the game is getting lost.

 

[BLUFF_CATCHER]

Hello community! It is possible to make the player get experience for the zombies killed by our land mines? Killing without experience points is not profitable! 

 

[FileMachete]

Hello community! It is possible to make the player get experience for the zombies killed by our land mines? Killing without experience points is not profitable! 

Sorry, but no.

There are technical reasons.

The game would have to keep track of who placed every landmine.

Which might work for single player games.

But it could be used with bad intent on multiplayer servers.