PC A18 Feedback: What needs to change.

[SnakeWildlife]

Everything here is opinionative, if you disagree thats ok! I play in higher difficulties and do what i can to help patch our popular servers with custom balancing in order to make the game more playable for all within our group.

Part 1: **MELEE in A18 does not work.**

Problem A. You have to spend your stamina making an attack, which enrages the zombie to walk faster, giving you little room to make space from the zombie because you just spent your stamina on the attack and dont have enough stamina to sprint away after each attack, the system utterly defeats itself. As soon as you start encountering Radiated zombies that run or sprint, dont even think about out-stamina-ing them, you wont.

Solution A. Remove the ''Zombies run faster after hitting them'' It makes no sense and punishes the player for taking risk. This added layer of behavior only adds to damaging total server performance, every little matters.

Problem B. Melee Damage is too low and not worth the risk. For example, using a fully modded R6 Steel Spear with maximized perks, it still took me 32 strikes to put down a single Radiated Zombie (i play one difficulty level down from the maximum). Due to problem A, i would have died about 6 times over before killing this zombie with a Spear, but i was testing damage under Godmode conditions. The damage results i was witnessing from several Melee weapons types were shockingly bad. The only reason Steel Sledgehammer builds work (barely..after level 50) is because stunlocking prevents the zombies from attacking, and you can stun more than one zombie at the same time, making it viable, but the rest of the melee weapons? The damage is too low, and it is total suicide to attempt to use them once the Radiated zombies start spawning.

Solution B. Huge damage increase up the tiers for melee weapons for taking such incredible risks. Steel level melee weapons should be doing far more damage than guns (yes, WAY more than a gun, you read that correctly). Sadly, A18 in our servers has become all about the race to get your M60. The damage increases need to happen on everything, from Chainsaw to Shovel.

Part 2: **The poor layout of Perks in A18 provide a lack of choice for the first 40+ levels. WHAT A DRAG and massive inefficient waste of our time.**

Problem: I have to do this cycle every game...

-Want to stop wasting my valuable time and actually find GOOD loot? Spend the next 15 levels getting my Loot Bonus up.

-Want to get a non-wasteful amount of mats from salvaging cars and devices? Spend another 5 levels.

-Time to dig for resources to build my big base, now i need a bunch of strength and perks in block damage and how much materials i get, another 15+ levels.

-I need to eat 8 square meals a day, this is annoying, better put a few points into Iron gut.

-I cant carry an extra feather or egg because i dont have the carry slots, better put a few points there.

Now i can finally start to pick perks based on my weaponry or armor choices!...with radiated zombies everywhere.

Solution: Remove perks completely from the game which are tied to loot chances and digging/salvaging enhancements. This should be done through the tier of our gear and mods. The game is a slog of a bore picking all of these perks needed before we can actually START picking real perks. I feel like i am picking perks which FIX GAME IMBALANCES. It makes no sense. The type of clothing we wear should also help to define some of our carry weight without mods or perks (does a hoodie not have pockets? mine do! they always have)

Part 3: **XP is too slow.**.

Ill keep this one short, everybody knows this without me needing to even write it out, but here it is anyway.

Almost every server on the planet is running the maximum XP multiplier, and even at this setting...its STILL slow.

Can we please relax the BREAK YOUR NECK grind? This direction is worrying us. This is not an MMO, some people enjoy playing more than ONE game. I am trying to play 3, but the grind is a total killer.

Part 4: **Player BLOCK DAMAGE/exploiting is out of control on PVE servers**

Problem A: Projectile/thrown weapons or explodable devices (not hitscan) are able to destroy blocks which are claimed by other players, breaking the landclaim rules. This includes grenades, TNT, explosive arrow and more. This led to base raiding on non pvp servers and urgent action had to be taken on our end to stop it.

Temporary Solution A: On our servers we forcibly had to modify the game so that Block Damage on all of these devices, was 0.

Problem B: On populated servers, dropmining has become a problem which takes servers completely down. We have had to limit dropmining heavily and use discord bots to tell us if someone is trying to take us down (which during some of the troll attacks in the past, has proved harmful to our servers). We have no choice but to enforce rules and controls to limit this lag.

Solution B: We partially lighten the lag by making blocks disappear instantly rather than physically fall, but even that is not enough sometimes, so i would like TheFunPimps to come up with a new solution, perhaps a way in which the server more efficiently calculates falls. When you have 30+ people on your server, these dropmine events are crippling resulting in huge lagspikes or total shutdown. Our hardware is top of the line and not in question, this is a software issue.

Part 5: **Horde nights spawn NOTHING on populated servers**

Problem: This problem has existed for years, its unacceptable at this stage of development.

Temporary Solution: We have a dedicated team of admins and moderators who we are very thankful to for helping us with this issue. 24/7 they are available across all timezones to manually spawn the zombies for horde nights, but TheFunPimps need to get on this so we can take a well deserved vacation!

-

There are a lot more issues, but i feel these are the largest ones, the most important being first.

I am passionate about the game, have been for many MANY years. Hope this goes to the right people.

 

[Roland]

Everything here is opinionative, if you disagree thats ok! I play in higher difficulties and do what i can to help patch our popular servers with custom balancing in order to make the game more playable for all within our group.

Part 1: **MELEE in A18 does not work.**

Problem A. You have to spend your stamina making an attack, which enrages the zombie to walk faster, giving you little room to make space from the zombie because you just spent your stamina on the attack and dont have enough stamina to sprint away after each attack, the system utterly defeats itself. As soon as you start encountering Radiated zombies that run or sprint, dont even think about out-stamina-ing them, you wont.

Solution A. Remove the ''Zombies run faster after hitting them'' It makes no sense and punishes the player for taking risk. This added layer of behavior only adds to damaging total server performance, every little matters.

Problem B. Melee Damage is too low and not worth the risk. For example, using a fully modded R6 Steel Spear with maximized perks, it still took me 32 strikes to put down a single Radiated Zombie (i play one difficulty level down from the maximum). Due to problem A, i would have died about 6 times over before killing this zombie with a Spear, but i was testing damage under Godmode conditions. The damage results i was witnessing from several Melee weapons types were shockingly bad. The only reason Steel Sledgehammer builds work (barely..after level 50) is because stunlocking prevents the zombies from attacking, and you can stun more than one zombie at the same time, making it viable, but the rest of the melee weapons? The damage is too low, and it is total suicide to attempt to use them once the Radiated zombies start spawning.

Solution B. Huge damage increase up the tiers for melee weapons for taking such incredible risks. Steel level melee weapons should be doing far more damage than guns (yes, WAY more than a gun, you read that correctly). Sadly, A18 in our servers has become all about the race to get your M60. The damage increases need to happen on everything, from Chainsaw to Shovel.

Only responding to Part 1 for now.

Overall Problem: You are playing a difficulty level higher than you find fun. Turn down the difficulty and zombies will rage less often and not take so many hits to die. Weapons not being as effective and having to deal with extra rage events is exactly the point of those higher settings.

Problem A: Sounds like you are trying to use power attacks too much instead of using a mixture of regular and power. I never run out of stamina and have plenty to run away.

Problem B: Melee damage is balanced extremely well for default and +1 difficulties. They are purposely under powered compared to enemies in the higher difficulties because that is the basis for the increase in difficulty.

I think the better question for part one is, "What would be more desirable ways to make the game more difficult instead of making the enemies take more hits and for the rage feature to happen more often?"

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Deleted.

My opinion/response was not written good enough to be part of this conversation.

Spoiler

excuse me

 

[Roland]

Part 2: **The poor layout of Perks in A18 provide a lack of choice for the first 40+ levels. WHAT A DRAG and massive inefficient waste of our time.**

Problem: I have to do this cycle every game...

-Want to stop wasting my valuable time and actually find GOOD loot? Spend the next 15 levels getting my Loot Bonus up.

-Want to get a non-wasteful amount of mats from salvaging cars and devices? Spend another 5 levels.

-Time to dig for resources to build my big base, now i need a bunch of strength and perks in block damage and how much materials i get, another 15+ levels.

-I need to eat 8 square meals a day, this is annoying, better put a few points into Iron gut.

-I cant carry an extra feather or egg because i dont have the carry slots, better put a few points there.

Now i can finally start to pick perks based on my weaponry or armor choices!...with radiated zombies everywhere.

Solution: Remove perks completely from the game which are tied to loot chances and digging/salvaging enhancements. This should be done through the tier of our gear and mods. The game is a slog of a bore picking all of these perks needed before we can actually START picking real perks. I feel like i am picking perks which FIX GAME IMBALANCES. It makes no sense. The type of clothing we wear should also help to define some of our carry weight without mods or perks (does a hoodie not have pockets? mine do! they always have)

One thing I have noticed is that brown and orange quality weapons are actually pretty good vs regular zombies. You don't really need higher level weapons until later in the game so taking lucky looter isn't something that MUST be done. Of course, you are playing with bullet sponge enemies but that is the challenge you chose.

TFP has listened to you and others who don't like having to spend so many points on non-combat related abilities and are reducing those trees to 3 perks instead of 5 which means you'll be able to reach the top with fewer points.

I do like your solution of putting most of those types of bonuses on the tools and clothing, however. That could be interesting but I'd still like there to be something in the perks as well-- maybe just a single perk that would add a bonus to whatever tools you were using. Definitely not critical to have but nice if you wanted to be a boss in that area.

The feeling of fixing game imbalance comes primarily from your chosen difficulty level. You are definitely using perks to overcome a deficit when playing Warrior and above.

 

[Roland]

Part 3: **XP is too slow.**.

Ill keep this one short, everybody knows this without me needing to even write it out, but here it is anyway.

Almost every server on the planet is running the maximum XP multiplier, and even at this setting...its STILL slow.

Can we please relax the BREAK YOUR NECK grind? This direction is worrying us. This is not an MMO, some people enjoy playing more than ONE game. I am trying to play 3, but the grind is a total killer.

What everyone doesn't seem to know is that running with maximum xp inflates the gamestage faster and brings the tougher enemies out sooner. You were just complaining in the last section that you can't get to improving your combat skills in time before irradiated enemies make their appearance. Well, part of the reason for that is you have inflated the xp AND you are playing on higher difficulty which also has a higher multiplier on gamestage.

My solution for you would be to modify your gamestage in the files with a lower growth multiplier so that you aren't punished so much for wanting to play through the game at such a fast pace.

 

[Roland]

Part 4: **Player BLOCK DAMAGE/exploiting is out of control on PVE servers**

Problem A: Projectile/thrown weapons or explodable devices (not hitscan) are able to destroy blocks which are claimed by other players, breaking the landclaim rules. This includes grenades, TNT, explosive arrow and more. This led to base raiding on non pvp servers and urgent action had to be taken on our end to stop it.

Temporary Solution A: On our servers we forcibly had to modify the game so that Block Damage on all of these devices, was 0.

Problem B: On populated servers, dropmining has become a problem which takes servers completely down. We have had to limit dropmining heavily and use discord bots to tell us if someone is trying to take us down (which during some of the troll attacks in the past, has proved harmful to our servers). We have no choice but to enforce rules and controls to limit this lag.

Solution B: We partially lighten the lag by making blocks disappear instantly rather than physically fall, but even that is not enough sometimes, so i would like TheFunPimps to come up with a new solution, perhaps a way in which the server more efficiently calculates falls. When you have 30+ people on your server, these dropmine events are crippling resulting in huge lagspikes or total shutdown. Our hardware is top of the line and not in question, this is a software issue.

Problem A: The block damage by explosives on claimed blocks would qualify as a legitimate bug AFAIK and should be reported in that thread if you want the right people to see it.

Problem B: You have 30+ people on your server. This is way beyond the recommended limit. Your expectations of what the engine can handle are unrealistic. I think doing what you are doing to support the unsanctioned way you are playing is the best way to try and fix it. The Fun Pimps can't just do what you are doing and cause blocks to disappear instead of drop and then say "supported for 30+ people" because they would get huge backlash from people who bought a voxel game that has gravity and structural integrity. They want to see the blocks fall if the blocks fall. They want to mine by dropping blocks. And they can if the game isn't being stretched beyond all limits to get massive numbers of people playing at once.

30+ people? This isn't an MMO you know....

 

[SnakeWildlife]

Only responding to Part 1 for now.
Overall Problem: You are playing a difficulty level higher than you find fun. Turn down the difficulty and zombies will rage less often and not take so many hits to die. Weapons not being as effective and having to deal with extra rage events is exactly the point of those higher settings.

Problem A: Sounds like you are trying to use power attacks too much instead of using a mixture of regular and power. I never run out of stamina and have plenty to run away.

Problem B: Melee damage is balanced extremely well for default and +1 difficulties. They are purposely under powered compared to enemies in the higher difficulties because that is the basis for the increase in difficulty.

I think the better question for part one is, "What would be more desirable ways to make the game more difficult instead of making the enemies take more hits and for the rage feature to happen more often?"

Actually i like setting the game to a higher difficulty because i DO find it fun, but this shouldnt push melee out as an invalid choice, all builds need to be valid and Melee, just isnt. Melee shouldnt be thrown into the trashcan just because you believe its for casual players.

I use a mixture of normal and heavy attacks and modification combinations.

Just thought i would counter your points.

The game shouldnt boil down to how fast i can put 7.62mm rounds into something, which is what happens when the Radiated zombies start rushing.

In A17 i ran a Steel Armor Sledgehammer character and it was both successful and fun with risk included. In A18 the entire melee range is invalidated.

I just want to point out that balancing a game which is easy is almost impossible to do...because you cannot properly test things and compare things on a sponge. That test environment is not suitable to learn imbalances. You need to be pushed, to then find out and discover what is most effective enough to deal with the challenge. There has to be challenge...else you cannot learn.

You need to be put in really dangerous situations to realise what is and isnt going to save your life, and once you crank the difficulty up, the result is always the same, select the M60, because nothing else is going to stop the radiated horde in your face fast enough.

30+ people? This isn't an MMO you know....

FPS is always high on our hardware, the game can handle that.

We are very successful. And we need TheFunPimps to help what is a good majority of the online playerbase currently on our servers. We have the vital information in an online environment which TheFunPimps will find very valuable.

Note to others on forum, if you come in here with 'You just suck' or 'you dont understand it enough'. i wont be responding I have played too much 7 days since alpha 4, trolling or taunting does not effect me.

 

[Roland]

Part 5: **Horde nights spawn NOTHING on populated servers**

Problem: This problem has existed for years, its unacceptable at this stage of development.

Temporary Solution: We have a dedicated team of admins and moderators who we are very thankful to for helping us with this issue. 24/7 they are available across all timezones to manually spawn the zombies for horde nights, but TheFunPimps need to get on this so we can take a well deserved vacation!

This will continue to be on you as long as you are choosing to populate your servers beyond the supported numbers. Default is 8 zombies per player because at the maximum of 8 players each one gets 8 zombies which takes us to the max of 64 entities in the world at once. With 30+ players I have no doubt the game doesn't spawn anything. I don't know if there is even any code to detect 30 players and send each one 2 zombies....

Don't let them buy vacation tickets any time soon and you might as well chain them to their computers.

 

[Roland]

Actually i like setting the game to a higher difficulty because i DO find it fun, but this shouldnt push melee out as an invalid choice, all builds need to be valid and Melee, just isnt. Melee shouldnt be thrown into the trashcan just because you believe its for casual players.

I don't think it is for casual players. I think melee is just super challenging at higher levels. "Too hard" doesn't mean "thrown into the trashcan".

I use a mixture of normal and heavy attacks and modification combinations.

Good to know. I guess it is simply because it takes so many hits to kill a single zombie at your difficulty level that you are running out of stamina before it dies. I see that as part of the challenge for selecting that level of difficulty but I can also believe that it isn't particularly fun.

The game shouldnt boil down to how fast i can put 7.62mm rounds into something, which is what happens when the Radiated zombies start rushing.

Agreed. But there is also a question as to whether you aren't artificially inflating your gamestage and bringing out those radiated zombies down upon yourself sooner than you are prepared for them because you have upped XP gains so much in your desire for faster pacing.

In A17 i ran a Steel Armor Sledgehammer character and it was both successful and fun with risk included. In A18 the entire melee range is invalidated.

That may be a good point. If you feel strongly about it then I would do a side by side comparison and post it in the A18 feedback thread showing that melee weapons seemed to scale well with higher difficulties in A17 but that they don't as well in A18. Keep in mind though that stats are random in A18 and you very well might get a Purple sledgehammer that is inferior in dps in A18 compared to the static Purple sledgehammer of A17.

 

[Roland]

I just want to point out that balancing a game which is easy is almost impossible to do...because you cannot properly test things and compare things on a sponge. That test environment is not suitable to learn imbalances. You need to be pushed, to then find out and discover what is most effective enough to deal with the challenge. There has to be challenge...else you cannot learn.

You need to be put in really dangerous situations to realise what is and isnt going to save your life, and once you crank the difficulty up, the result is always the same, select the M60, because nothing else is going to stop the radiated horde in your face fast enough.

I can agree with you that when testing you do need to push the envelope. I also agree with you that it is in the best interest of TFP to do the best they can to scale things with difficulty in order to keep it challenging but not impossible-- or maybe not impossible but just not fun or viable.

But you have to be careful as well. You say that it is always the same result-- just grab the M60 because nothing else is going to stop the radiated horde fast enough. I believe you are much more skilled at this game than me. Don't you think there are some out there more skilled than you? If TFP pumps up the melee weapons to your satisfaction how do you know there won't be others who feel that their challenge just got thrown in the crapper?

As you say, balancing is a tough assignment. Glad we only have to talk about it

FPS is always high on our hardware, the game can handle that.
We are very successful. And we need TheFunPimps to help what is a good majority of the online playerbase currently on our servers. We have the vital information in an online environment which TheFunPimps will find very valuable.

Note to others on forum, if you come in here with 'You just suck' or 'you dont understand it enough'. i wont be responding I have played too much 7 days since alpha 4, trolling or taunting does not effect me.

TFP has a very high standard they must meet before they can say the game supports x feature. They feel good about 8 people and whether more run great on your machines or not is irrelevant. Like I said, the very code may not support 30+ people. What if 50 people are on? That is about 1.3 or fewer zombies per person. It isn't supported at all I don't believe....

 

[Boidster]

Dat OP formatting tho... :encouragement: