Alpha 16 is the best. All downhill from there.

Can't build underground bases anymore? Well, that's because a few people decided to AFK an event that can actually be toggled off in the settings.

Don't you mean you can still build an underground base, but you'll have to defend it. Can't that be viewed as an engineering challenge?

In A19 folks were building bases that were big pits that zombies would fall into. Even if the falling damage was minimized they still took a little. I remember helping a team defend one.

Folks today are building bases where zombies climb ladders... a vertical base. You could dig down and do that, though admittedly it is easier to get head shots as they climb towards you.
 
Don't you mean you can still build an underground base, but you'll have to defend it.
Yeah, well, good luck with that. I know GNS doesn't build them anymore because things got too chaotic even for him on horde night and he's a pretty good engineer if anyone were to ask me. I think it says something not necessarily flattering when even powergamers don't want to bother with them anymore.
 
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You could dig down and do that, though admittedly it is easier to get head shots as they climb towards you.
Ladder base from below isn't all that great, zero headshots.. but I did "aiming up at 45 degrees" once. It was my last redundant position, so it didn't get much action, but I checked it worked .. perfect line for headshots. And I don't see why the design wouldn't work today, as long as the path isn't too long.

The only issue is randomly digging zeds straight on top, those can be encouraged to get a move on with a couple blocks and turret placements.
 
The falling base I saw in A19 involved a big pit from the surface bringing the zombies to near bedrock. Then they had to climb back up part way to face the heroes. It's a lot more work than just building on the surface, but you can still get the zeds coming head first. It's convoluted, but possible. I don't recall the zombies digging since the shortest path was to fall.

I do, fondly, remember when they didn't put the player tunnel and hatch far enough away. The zombies cleared the hatch and came flooding into the player-side of the base.

If TFP is looking for options, turning off zombie digging sounds like one some players would enjoy.
 
It's convoluted, but possible. I don't recall the zombies digging since the shortest path was to fall.
Should work somewhat if you're in the middle of a big pit, and have some design on the lip that encourages them to get in. Can't think of sure-fire way for that kind of a drop thou, they're likely to start digging down on the edge.

I did one, in A22, with about a 10x10 pit and a "clear" path to me around it (in the stone) - but at top the path started with the classic half-block dropper. So they were trying to walk down a staircase, but ended up falling in the middle of the pit. Into a web of eFence.

EDIT: Actually, now that I think of it.. a half block dropper staircase might work. Half block ramps down the sides with suitable wedge tips. ■■■■it, I was supposed to sleep this night.
 
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Hah. This turn in the discussion just gave me an idea. Since we know zombies are going to dig, you could create a large 3D mass of spikes all around an underground bunker, and then either 1) use the OCB density hoe to reset the density in the area --which would take forever, or 2) build your design in the prefab editor and just use the editor to reset the terrain density around your bajillion spikes.

I know it's a terrible idea for several different reasons...but it would be funny to see a horde suicide themselves on spikes trying to dig into your base.
 
Actually, now that I think of it.. a half block dropper staircase might work. Half block ramps down the sides with suitable wedge tips. ■■■■it, I was supposed to sleep this night.
Well, never ye mind. While the zeds were willing to walk a half block ramp just fine, about 95% of my quick test subjects jumped right into my pit, no hesitation. No ramps needed, just .. a pit. Ok. If that's how you wanna play it this round.

v2.2 (b1)
 
Yeah, well, good luck with that. I know GNS doesn't build them anymore because things got too chaotic even for him on horde night and he's a pretty good engineer if anyone were to ask me. I think it says something not necessarily flattering when even powergamers don't want to bother with them anymore.

I could be wrong but I think the reason why some people such as GNS don't prefer an underground base is the sheer amount of work / upkeep that go into them versus an above ground base.

With underground bases you have to do alot of digging AND you are at a disadvantage because it is difficult to tell what direction the zombies are coming from. Not to mention, it's not as exciting to watch someone sitting in a hole waiting for zombies to show up. 😉

If not engineered well, you get zombies digging in unwanted places creating even more upkeep during/after the bloodmoon.

During 1.x, my group did a bloodmoon in the downtown subway tile and it was a ton of fun. It helped to create multiple access points for the AI to get down to us to minimize the random digging but it held up for the most part.


Maybe in 2.0 we will try another underground base for fun
 
I could be wrong but I think the reason why some people such as GNS don't prefer an underground base is the sheer amount of work / upkeep that go into them versus an above ground base.

With underground bases you have to do alot of digging AND you are at a disadvantage because it is difficult to tell what direction the zombies are coming from. Not to mention, it's not as exciting to watch someone sitting in a hole waiting for zombies to show up. 😉

If not engineered well, you get zombies digging in unwanted places creating even more upkeep during/after the bloodmoon.
That's not what he said. ;) Digging zombies are weird, but will never affect me. It's just an example.
 
I could be wrong but I think the reason why some people such as GNS don't prefer an underground base is the sheer amount of work / upkeep that go into them versus an above ground base.

With underground bases you have to do alot of digging AND you are at a disadvantage because it is difficult to tell what direction the zombies are coming from. Not to mention, it's not as exciting to watch someone sitting in a hole waiting for zombies to show up. 😉

If not engineered well, you get zombies digging in unwanted places creating even more upkeep during/after the bloodmoon.

During 1.x, my group did a bloodmoon in the downtown subway tile and it was a ton of fun. It helped to create multiple access points for the AI to get down to us to minimize the random digging but it held up for the most part.


Maybe in 2.0 we will try another underground base for fun
Also doesn't help that things that work in one patch don't in another. You make a nice base where the zombies path to the entrance rather than beat on the sides and one patch later and now they beat on the sides because they no longer want to run the distance they previously would.

Tower bases or bases in the air tend to do better with AI pathing. For the record I don't think the solution is making the AI destroy those as well, but make other bases more viable so that isn't the meta. No reason to build ground or sub-ground level due to AI limitations. With a few tweaks to pathing they can become viable again.
 
It’s such a vicious circle. People ask for constraints and rules to force balance and then people complain about gates and loss of that sandbox essence.

The key aspect of sandbox is that you can choose to play however you want but so many only want to play the most efficient method and ignore the rest wondering why anyone would ever choose a suboptimal choice. So then they want more balancing rules so there are several equally optimal choices so they can feel good about making those choices.

Devs just have to realize no matter what they do some faction will be unhappy. Right now, you can still choose to play the game in a myriad of ways as long as you are willing to forget about efficiency.
 
It’s such a vicious circle. People ask for constraints and rules to force balance and then people complain about gates and loss of that sandbox essence.

The key aspect of sandbox is that you can choose to play however you want but so many only want to play the most efficient method and ignore the rest wondering why anyone would ever choose a suboptimal choice. So then they want more balancing rules so there are several equally optimal choices so they can feel good about making those choices.

Devs just have to realize no matter what they do some faction will be unhappy. Right now, you can still choose to play the game in a myriad of ways as long as you are willing to forget about efficiency.

Part of the problem is that "sandbox" has subtly different meanings when it comes to gaming.

A "sandbox" can be a game where story and similar considerations mostly take a back seat in favor of game mechanics, hardcore simulation, emergent gameplay, player agency, etc: "Here's a whole new world. Try to figure it out and survive it, buttercup."

A "sandbox" can also be a game which is figuratively just that -- a sandbox. It's a place where people play the way they want to play, and do their own thing: "Don't touch my bucket, get your own. Stop messing with my sandcastle! Moooom!"

The kinds of people who play in these two very different concepts of a sandbox do not tend to play well together. They're looking for entirely different experiences. And they're going to lobby developers for entirely different kinds of features.
 
It’s such a vicious circle. People ask for constraints and rules to force balance and then people complain about gates and loss of that sandbox essence.

The key aspect of sandbox is that you can choose to play however you want but so many only want to play the most efficient method and ignore the rest wondering why anyone would ever choose a suboptimal choice. So then they want more balancing rules so there are several equally optimal choices so they can feel good about making those choices.

Devs just have to realize no matter what they do some faction will be unhappy. Right now, you can still choose to play the game in a myriad of ways as long as you are willing to forget about efficiency.
Who asked for constraints? Can you give example?
And if most or many players wanted to play in some META, why would you make it impossible for them? Because minority complained that others have it to easy? 🤯
But eventualy I agree with you, devs should realize that there will be some fraction that will be unhappy with their choiches, but when they will make majority of their playerbase unhappy, by taking away what they enjoy, then this game will die. I play this game for 12 years or something and there were some updates that I was not happy about previously, but I enjoyed the rest and hoped for better future update. But now I started to complain, because without mods this game is unplayable and if it will not change, then this game that I praised for 12 years will be unplayable for me even with overhauls.
 
Who asked for constraints? Can you give example?
I’ll do even better. You tell me how you want the game to change in order to be fun and I’ll tell you how other players would see those changes as constraints to the way they want to play.

The fact that you view the current vanilla game unplayable and that in the future even with mods it will be unplayable tells me we have very different views about how to have fun with a video game. But I’m interested to hear what you feel needs to happen to make the game baseline playable again.
 
I’ll do even better. You tell me how you want the game to change in order to be fun and I’ll tell you how other players would see those changes as constraints to the way they want to play.

The fact that you view the current vanilla game unplayable and that in the future even with mods it will be unplayable tells me we have very different views about how to have fun with a video game. But I’m interested to hear what you feel needs to happen to make the game baseline playable again.

1 Return goreblocks (we had to build walls high enough or dig moats deep enough to battle this and it was nice source of bones and dead flesh.
2 Return food smell - we had advantage of better cooked foods that smelled less or if we had slow metabolism and did not had to carry any.
3 Return Wellness - it was good mechanic that rewarded us for better cooking or not dying
4 Return various temperatures (biome temperatures used to vary throughout the day and depending on weather), water causing temperature drop
5 Return UMA zombies or make at least several hundrets of different variations (you can just have several hair, face, clothing variations to achieve that)
different variety for blocks with different stability. Reinforced concreete used to have better stability than basic concrete and metal blocks even better... that made sense.
6 If you want to keep this biome challenges, then make them in other way, that doing some quests or crafting some acessories would help you survive there, but you will always had to adjust your clothing or diet to live there
7 Make nights scary again. Zombies should spawn way more outside than inside buildings.
8a Remove zombie bs movement. How they doge bullets like Neo in Matrix, or fell allways in my direction, somethimes even teleport half meter towards me. You did nerfed how they always did hit us when they were on the ground, so you can scale this bs bit better.
8b You can always add them more HP, damage or speed, especialy on INSANE dificulty, that feels like joke now. Or you can nerf player damage output, just don't make them to move like a broken bots, that will most of the time avoid hits that should not be missed.
9 I know this would be not liked, but I would prefer old way of building. (if you wanted to replace blok, then you have to destroy old one first) Who knows how to build, then he will be okay with that, who does not will build just boxes forever.
10 Return proper roaming hordes. Screamers are nice adittion, but I remember how I had to run away from them, or how I lucky I felt when I managed to hide from roaming dog horde. I know some people might not like it, but add it as an optional thing, or mandatory for insane dificulty.
11a Make zombies more simple in behaving. They are not supposed to know what is the most effective path to my base or how to destroy it. And they should not start randomly destroying anything just because they are frustrated (don't project devs emotions on to them :p). They are supposed to be hungry and want to eat us, not troll us. I know change like this would force us to start building differently again, but at least zombies would behave more lore friendly. If someone don't enjoys BM to that point that he wants to build afk base, he will eventualy turn it off or log off on MP.
11b Nerf vulture BM speed. Again if someone want's to skip BM by riding a bike, then he can turn it off, but it is anoying when a bird is catching up to me and spitting on me with a precision of a sniper and his spit breaks my leg while I drive on motorbike on my way to my horde base. It never killed me, it is just stupid. You could nerf visibility during BM, that we are not supposed to see through some thic red fog in to a distance and travel safely for whole night.
For example for me it is now easier to spend the horde night outside in wasteland fighting zombies on the streets of town, than building a base. And I like to build a base, but there is no time for it, since I had to search for books if I want to progress and even when I build something, then zombies will tear it down anyways. So the most fun part of this game=Tower defense is dead for me. And I used to play mostly that mod that you removed in 2014-15 when we had horde night every night and few airdrops every day on small minimap.
11c You should return this as well, even as an DLC, I would pay for it.
12 Return higher variety of gun quality or impact of their parts quality. We can have also different mod quality.
13a if you want players to have reason for looting, make best items avariable only in loot, not by crafting. It would make sense that best things are made by someone else before apocalypse than by player.
13b if you still want to allow player to craft best quality of item, then let him choose only one specialization. That one player can craft best AR, other player best Hammers... etc
14 make farming challenging: crops should not grow at same speed in every biome. They might stay on default if we use hoe and fertiliser in green biome, or watering in desert biome, but otherwise they should grow slow, or even slower in snow biome and mutate in wasteland, that they either die there or we will get supercorn randomly out of 100-1000 pieces.
15a expand electricity: We should be able to conect electric devices in more various ways, have different switches and logics (like Empyrion has for 5-7 years now) we should have option how to keep drawbridges for example to keep down on default and raise when they receive signal from sensor.
15b Return big spikes or add more traps, or at least higher quality of more durable traps. I was hoping for way more traps since I was playing Fortite in closed alpha in 2015 and I was happy when you added those few traps in bit later, but that is it? We will not have anything else?
16 add more variety of quests, moders already did it and it would not be first time that you coppied something from them, it is not that hard.
17 Return learn by doing - most favourite mods are so popular, because they have this back in some way.
18 Return the snow... this migth be my last request, but this is something that I really miss. Return the snow covering roads or player built structures, when it will start snowing. I was waiting for it to return since a17 and had high hopes for it to retun in 2.0 but instead of that we got this mess of challenges and badges.
 
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1 Return goreblocks (we had to build walls high enough or dig moats deep enough to battle
This is one of my most missed features. 😁Regardless, the constraints many other people complained about was the necessary clean up and the graphical ugliness of the gore piles.

2 Return food smell - we had advantage of better cooked foods that smelled less or if we had slow metabolism and did not had to carry any.
Some people dislike forced inventory management and being constrained to carry several canned foods instead of one meal to avoid smell turned some some people off of the whole smell mechanic. I’ve got nothing against it myself but I can acknowledge the constraints it added to the game.
 
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