1100 Zombies in the first horde night - is this really meant to be?

White-Gandalf

White-Gandalf

Refugee
Hallo survivers!

The Release Version 2.3 brought some interesting twists. One of them is the "neverending story" of the horde nights. This resulted in experiences of about 1100 Zombies killed in the first and 1300 in the second horde night. Of course with an appropriate mass of loot bags. For which to loot it was absolutely appropriate to have the timestayafterdeath set to a real time hour.

Already in the previous 2.x versions, where we had fourth waves of 100 zombies, those gave an exceptional massive amount of loot bags (compared to previous versions). But the version 2.3 goes to new horizons by a factor of 10.

Is this really meant to be that way (two storage boxes full of loot at the first and second horde night)?
Or is this possibly a tiny little bit exaggerated?

By the way: I managed to kill those tremenduous amount of zombies with a simple spike base design that i have nearly identical since Alpha 15.
Since those zombie horde nights - obviousely - never posed a REAL challenge (now already over 7 Alphas), isn't it time to remove the horde nights completely from the game (like, for example water jars - which as well belonged to a problem that "never posed a real challenge" and were removed for exactly that very reason).
[rolling on the floor with laughter]

To go back from sarcasm to sincerity: The exaggeration of the last wave throws the balance "a little" off: On one hand, it gives a drastically exaggerated amount of loot, on the other hand, it requires an exaggerated amount of repair for the traps.

Take it just as a data point of user experience.

Another by the way: I really appreciate the fact that the zombie AI is tailored to first destroy traps before going to destroy load bearing structures. Without that, my base wouldn't have stayed. If i had done such shenanigans (1000 zombies in a base meant for just 150 with 5 fold reserve) in Alpha 16, the base would long have been gone with the last traps still standing.
 
Last edited:
I have long, wonderful horde nights but that's because I love running exceptionally long days. I like those long, lovely horde nights and, before the last update, usually ran those early ones twice. I'm really appreciating that last wave lasting the rest of the night, though my RNG arsehats gave me quite an awful last wave on my latest playthrough. It was fun, but the really explody, nasty kind of fun. Anyway, you didn't mention what your day length settings and difficulty/gamestage were during the horde. If you're running 120+ days, your night will be exceptionally long and zombie count will be pretty darned high. I almost always have at least two boxes of loot, though not a lot of it could be considered 'good' loot. Also, check your perks to see if you or any of your team have the book set done that gives you extra zombie drops. That can make some lovely ballpits of loot. I can attest to that longer lasting horde of awful making a huge mess of my base, but, the fun was worth it.

I like horde night. I'd rather it not be removed and I certainly found that last one to be a challenge. Everyone is different, though.
 
It's real fun (for me) to have survived those hordes in v2.3. Despite exceptionally close to collapse in the first, and still far from "with enough reserve" in the second horde. The audience seems to like those outcomes, too.

I play in insane / 90min day / 8 h night with Server side zombies plus, Elite zombies and BlueBerryBlue Zombies (three zombie mods that add a lot of stronger versions including ranged attacks with rockets, bombs, all types of guns, fire and lightning bolts).

In the xml of those mods you see that they are still not adapted to v2.3, since in the xml comments, they for example write about "longer despawn time for loot bags", but effectively half it. Because they just didn't react to the latest changes in v2.3. This includes the proliferation of stronger zombies (of level radiated with up to 7500 life points) in the "fourth wave" of the blood moon hordes right from Gamestage 1 onwards. If you survive those, you are really happy (or lucky)... :D

As long as the horde quantities scaled with gamestage, those occasional stronger zombies in the early horde nights were challenges, but bearable without drastic results. You are just glad to have such a rare boss enemy finally send to rest. But with the never ending wave, those enemy additions become real endless nightmares. One moment, you a happy to have one monster put down, the next moment, there are three of them spawned because the RNG decided to throw the dice that way. And when you have dispatched of those, you just realize that there has already the next one monster enemy spawned.

The experience with v2.3 is just... something of another world, i would describe it.
Never had such thinly survived horde nights.
 
Last edited:
I really liked how you would run out of zombies at low levels, and it would ramp up as you leveled. The devs tend to patch out anything like that because they want their game to be harder, but not necessarily more immersive. It makes sense for them to do this because it feeds in to the more "arcade" nature that the game has become and moves it further away from what the game once was.
 
Khissi said:
I like horde night. I'd rather it not be removed and I certainly found that last one to be a challenge. Everyone is different, though.
Click to expand...
It won't ever be removed since there is already an option to remove it in the settings. The OP was just joking about that to make a jab at jar removal. :)

White-Gandalf said:
I play in insane / 90min day / 8 h night with Server side zombies plus, Elite zombies and BlueBerryBlue Zombies (three zombie mods that add a lot of stronger versions including ranged attacks with rockets, bombs, all types of guns, fire and lightning bolts).
Click to expand...
I play 60 and sometimes 50 minute days with vanilla zombies and the balance seems fine to me. It's fine to call for balance if you're playing by the default rules and you notice something unbalanced but if you change your settings and add in mods that specifically alter horde night it is a bit silly to say that things are out of whack. They are out of whack mostly because of the alterations you made if not totally because of them. Perhaps they could nerf the bag drop percentage but they probably need to do that globally anyway. Then again, it's easy to go into the xml and change that for myself if I personally think that it is unbalanced for how I enjoy playing. There's no bag drop frequency that will please everyone.
 
I'd agree that the bag drops could be reduced, especially for horde night now that there are more zombies and the bags don't disappear as quickly. People will complain if they do that, of course. It still seems like a good idea. Maybe someday they can add an option for bag drop rates so people can adjust it however they want.

But as far as zombies lasting all night, that's a definite plus. Sure, it can make the first horde night or two more challenging when you don't have a ton of ammo and may have to use a lot of melee (if you don't already use melee for horde nights), but I don't consider that a problem. :)
 
Riamus said:
But as far as zombies lasting all night, that's a definite plus. Sure, it can make the first horde night or two more challenging when you don't have a ton of ammo and may have to use a lot of melee (if you don't already use melee for horde nights), but I don't consider that a problem. :)
Click to expand...
Complaints that the horde nights are "impossible" and the person wants a refund because the difficulty was beyond reasonable are actually fantastic endorsements for most gamers. Most gamers have a high opinion of themselves and when they read that someone else couldn't win at something they don't think, "I better avoid THAT", they think that the reviewer is probably a chump and if THEY were playing they'd probably succeed which could very well result in them picking up the game for that reason alone. Look at any phone game ad and you see them depict the player losing poorly. It's because they know the gamer ego psyche and that this will motivate people to download the game to show they can do it better (only to find out the game plays entirely differently than the ad....)

So bring on more of those reviews! :)
 
White-Gandalf said:
To go back from sarcasm to sincerity: The exaggeration of the last wave throws the balance "a little" off: On one hand, it gives a drastically exaggerated amount of loot, on the other hand, it requires an exaggerated amount of repair for the traps.

Take it just as a data point of user experience.

Another by the way: I really appreciate the fact that the zombie AI is tailored to first destroy traps before going to destroy load bearing structures. Without that, my base wouldn't have stayed. If i had done such shenanigans (1000 zombies in a base meant for just 150 with 5 fold reserve) in Alpha 16, the base would long have been gone with the last traps still standing.
Click to expand...
What would you think of an upgraded LCB, that had internal storage, and a repair all button? I assume that your Horde Night base is/can be built within a single land claim.

I to have begun my journey using spike traps for Horde Nights, and yes, the Z's take them down all to quickly, and replacing them/making repairs is taking to much playing time, so how would you feel if we could have a Land Claim Block, that when upgraded, had internal storage like a steel storage box, and a "Repair All" button that would take all the needed resources from that block's resources. Overall materials costs would be the same, but a player could save quite a bit of time (that could and should be spent playing) getting the repairs done.
 
WarMongerian said:
What would you think of an upgraded LCB, that had internal storage, and a repair all button? I assume that your Horde Night base is/can be built within a single land claim.

I to have begun my journey using spike traps for Horde Nights, and yes, the Z's take them down all to quickly, and replacing them/making repairs is taking to much playing time, so how would you feel if we could have a Land Claim Block, that when upgraded, had internal storage like a steel storage box, and a "Repair All" button that would take all the needed resources from that block's resources. Overall materials costs would be the same, but a player could save quite a bit of time (that could and should be spent playing) getting the repairs done.
Click to expand...
Another similar idea would be to give the drone repair functionality and set it to repair your base. Either way it would be a cool qol feature.
 
Roland said:
Another similar idea would be to give the drone repair functionality and set it to repair your base. Either way it would be a cool qol feature.
Click to expand...
Having a drone that stays at base 24/7 and does all of the repairs for the player would definitely be a cool QoL feature. But to implement something like that into the game would probably be a very tedious and time-consuming task to write a code for lol
 
NiteViper said:
Having a drone that stays at base 24/7 and does all of the repairs for the player would definitely be a cool QoL feature. But to implement something like that into the game would probably be a very tedious and time-consuming task to write a code for lol
Click to expand...

I am not a coder like the TFP development team, but I think they would face the same issue they had with uneven drying concrete.
 
Roland said:
Une autre idée similaire serait de doter le drone d'une fonction de réparation et de le configurer pour réparer votre base. Quoi qu'il en soit, ce serait une fonctionnalité intéressante pour améliorer la qualité de vie.
Click to expand...
What are u waiting for to do it lmao? Great idea but that Can be criticable^^
 
NiteViper said:
Having a drone that stays at base 24/7 and does all of the repairs for the player would definitely be a cool QoL feature. But to implement something like that into the game would probably be a very tedious and time-consuming task to write a code for lol
Click to expand...
Staying at the base and repairing while you're away probably isn't worth it. They'd basically have to just put the repairs on a timer and run a timer to see if it has finished before you return. And then if it didn't, they'd have to figure out what wasn't yet repaired when you return and what was repaired, which would be a waste of time, imo. Chunks aren't loaded when you're away, so it can't just actively repair while you are away.

However, having it repair while you're there is an option and probably isn't that difficult. Whether it is worth the time to code it is the question. But it could also work like the drone in Stranded: Alien Dawn, where it will not do repairs, but will bring the resources to do those repairs to each thing that needs repaired and highlight those. It would still require going around doing the repairs yourself, but you wouldn't have to worry about whether or not you have the resources in your inventory and you could easily see everything that needs repaired. Still, if it can also do the repairs, that would be nice. It would need to be a command you give it so that it will not try repairing during horde night and end up broken on the ground and where you can avoid turning that on if you are trying to save resources for other things.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top