Infested quest bug hunt

[Wacky Wizard]

This is just a discussion to see if anyone else has noticed this, as I believe there is a bug with co-op (not dedicated server, but it may be there also) infested quests, but not sure yet to post in the bug report area.

What we notice and think is a bug is that when we do a T2 infected quest (probably higher tiers also) on say day 3-4 and we still low game stage. as expected, there are lot more zombies. but the host gets swarmed with feral zombies, were as the client players only get more zombies although some can be tougher then normally in the POI like big mama, bicker (possibly rarely a feral), but never any swarms of ferals. it's not a problem as the host knowing their there, just puts spike traps near door to cheese them (but feel like game is forcing the cheese as at day 3-4 you have had not much chance to get better gear to be so swarmed by ferals.

So, the bug is defiantly why is the host much harder than the clients and we want to know if others have seen this.

Then infested is meant to be harder, but which is correct the host with many ferals or the clients with more and a few tougher (probably based on game stage) zombies?

 

[Riamus]

This is just a discussion to see if anyone else has noticed this, as I believe there is a bug with co-op (not dedicated server, but it may be there also) infested quests, but not sure yet to post in the bug report area.

What we notice and think is a bug is that when we do a T2 infected quest (probably higher tiers also) on say day 3-4 and we still low game stage. as expected, there are lot more zombies. but the host gets swarmed with feral zombies, were as the client players only get more zombies although some can be tougher then normally in the POI like big mama, bicki (possibly rarely a feral), but never any ferals. it's not a problem as the host knowing their there, just puts spike traps near door to cheese them (but feel like game is forcing the cheese as at day 3-4 you have had not much chance to get better gear to be so swarmed by ferals.

So, the bug is defiantly why is the host much harder than the clients and we want to know if others have seen this.

Then infested is meant to be harder, but which is correct the host with many ferals or the clients with more and a few tougher (probably based on game stage) zombies?

I don't know the specific answer to your question and don't know if this has changed at all in 2.6. But I wanted to point out that infested quests aren't just raising your game stage or anything like that in order to give you harder enemies or more enemies. An infested quest has additional spawns that are enabled during infested quests. Those spawns are based on what the POI designer for that specific POI chose to do for infested quests. Just like how you can find certain low tier POI that are particularly challenging (the Beware Dogs POI can sometimes have a dire wolf, for example), some infested quests will be harder than others.

I don't know from your description if you are comparing the host and the clients at the same POI or different ones. Since players at the same POI should all fight the same enemies unless they are spread out all over the POI, I'm guessing you're talking about different POI. If so, what I said above may be related to what you are experiencing. Also, don't forget to check the players' game stages. The host may be a higher game stage. Even 1 level higher for the host may be enough to put them into the feral range compared to the clients. That only applies if they aren't near one another, though. If the host is in one POI and the clients are in another, that can be the reason. If everyone is together and in the same party, the game looks at everyone's game stage, so that won't affect you in the same area with the same party.

 

[Wacky Wizard]

We are about to do some more testing as there are a few questions we want answers to.

generally, we play as a team (as a party). and we play (the harder the better so games don't need to go too long and more fun to see who lasts longest) until 1 of us dies and then we delete the game and restart seeing how far we get before a mistake is made each time.

first day we find as team a location we going to build our base (normally next to first trader we come to). we set some storage boxes and set marker for centre of base location. then we go off individually doing quests and challenges building up our loot and skills. we give each person a main role with skill books, so we give each player their area to maximise speed of crafting speed. at tear 1,2 or 3 we don't share quests to maximise in coming loot.

By day 3-4 we are normally up to T2 quests. and we are still not sharing quests but are still in a group/party as allies and our game stages are normally close. but it doesn't seem to matter if the host player is higher or lower than the clients, when the host takes an infested quest, 90% of the extra zombies are ALWAY feral. were as the clients can take the quest (even same POI) and doesn't matter if their game stage is higher/or lower than the host, they get harder zombies as expected, but very rarely a feral.

The issue I'm looking at is not whether the infested quest is harder or easier or correct or wrong. but the apparent difference between the host player and the clients. and are wondering if other people playing in groups have noticed this.

The test we are going to do when we play soon, is what happens when we DO share the quest? does the issue still happen when the host is the play that activates the rally point to when a client player activates it?

 

[Wacky Wizard]

OK, we did some more testing, and it definitely is only related to if the host is involved.

After doing many tests watching game stages, every time the host was in an infested quest, whether by themself or in a shared quest (with host or client sharing) or slightly higher or lower in game stage, the number of zombies doubled as expected the same as the clients when questing without the host. but the range of toughness of the zombies was way up compared to when only the client did the quest.

So, we came up with a good test for this. If you are in the middle of a quest and disconnect (deliberate by quitting game or un-intentionally by game crashing). the quest fails and you have to go back to rally point and reset/restart.

so, we got the client player to get an infested clear quest which was at the cobweb cottage on day 9. the client was game stage 42 and the host was 39. we shared up and activated the rally point. the client went to game stage 97 and the host to 93.

apart from the normal smaller zombies of the POI (Arlean's, janitors etc) we also had spawn 3 ferals, a biker, a cop, a hazmat and a soldier. the host player killed them all so client player didn't change much. then before the last zombie was killed, the client player quit the game which failed the quest.

Then the client re-entered checked his game stage was still at 42 and reset/restarted the quest without sharing it with the host and noticed his game stage once again went to 97(I know the quest gives gamestage_bonus of 30 which would take it to 57 but not sure what the gamestage_mod of .6 is applied to taking it to 97, but once again, it's not about what should or shouldn't be there(that's a different debate), but why the difference between host and client.

This time he still got the double zombies as expected, but the hardest zombie was a single spider. all others stayed similar to what the POI easy zombies were.

 

[meganoth]

OK, we did some more testing, and it definitely is only related to if the host is involved.

After doing many tests watching game stages, every time the host was in an infested quest, whether by themself or in a shared quest (with host or client sharing) or slightly higher or lower in game stage, the number of zombies doubled as expected the same as the clients when questing without the host. but the range of toughness of the zombies was way up compared to when only the client did the quest.

So, we came up with a good test for this. If you are in the middle of a quest and disconnect (deliberate by quitting game or un-intentionally by game crashing). the quest fails and you have to go back to rally point and reset/restart.

so, we got the client player to get an infested clear quest which was at the cobweb cottage on day 9. the client was game stage 42 and the host was 39. we shared up and activated the rally point. the client went to game stage 97 and the host to 93.

apart from the normal smaller zombies of the POI (Arlean's, janitors etc) we also had spawn 3 ferals, a biker, a cop, a hazmat and a soldier. the host player killed them all so client player didn't change much. then before the last zombie was killed, the client player quit the game which failed the quest.

Then the client re-entered checked his game stage was still at 42 and reset/restarted the quest without sharing it with the host and noticed his game stage once again went to 97(I know the quest gives gamestage_bonus of 30 which would take it to 57 but not sure what the gamestage_mod of .6 is applied to taking it to 97, but once again, it's not about what should or shouldn't be there(that's a different debate), but why the difference between host and client.

This time he still got the double zombies as expected, but the hardest zombie was a single spider. all others stayed similar to what the POI easy zombies were.

IMHO that test is not telling us anything: If you do a quest as a group, the gamestage of the quest is calculated for the group which is higher than the highest gamestage of any of the players.

Your host and a client should do the same quest, but both alone. Often the trader offers the same quest to multiple people, look for such a coincidence and you have a quest you can do with 2 people under almost the same conditions

This is how the game stage (GS) of a PARTY is calculated:

The GS of all players in the party are calculated.
The players are sorted by GS.
The highest GS number is multiplied by "startingWeight".
This then loops down the list and "startingWeight" is multiplied by "diminishingReturns" every time.
The final result is then converted to an INT that rounds down.

Example:
Players with GS 204, 30, 60, 91, 5, 1, 2, 80
startingWeight= 1, diminishingReturns=0.5 (defined in this xml file below)

So we get
204 * 1.0000000 = 204
91 * 0.5000000 = 45.5
80 * 0.2500000 = 20
60 * 0.1250000 = 7.5
30 * 0.0625000 = 1.875
5 * 0.0312500 = 0.15625
2 * 0.0156250 = 0.03125
1 * 0.0078125 = 0.0078125

...for a total of 279.0703125 which is then rounded down to a GS of 279

 

[Wacky Wizard]

IMHO that test is not telling us anything: If you do a quest as a group, the gamestage of the quest is calculated for the group which is higher than the highest gamestage of any of the players.

Your host and a client should do the same quest, but both alone. Often the trader offers the same quest to multiple people, look for such a coincidence and you have a quest you can do with 2 people under almost the same conditions

as stated:

After doing many tests watching game stages, every time the host was in an infested quest, whether by themself or in a shared quest (with host or client sharing)

We did do those tests. we had host and client do same infested quest at same poi it's why it took all day to get conditions as close as posible for each.

It is no longer a question to us of IS it happening. it is now a question of how or why it can be fixed?
but another question seems to be, is it only us?