PC Another "direction of the game thread" and iam concerned...
- Thread starter ThanVanMon
- Start date
BobTheBard
Refugee
That's what I meant to say, but I did a dumb and tripped over my own words. But it would also be welcomed by people who already do mod them out because now they don't need a mod to do it, and that's always nice.
And so we cut to it; you want an invincible passive base which requires no interaction, yet kills all the zombies. I'm sure it's possible, but its designed to not be simple, quick or cheap - so go and investigate how it might be done instead of demanding the game be changed so it's easier.
Realism is the intent, but that's shaped by game demands and engine limitations. The demolisher is designed to add unpredictability and threat to any attempted glitchy ways to bypass risk when killing the horde. A quick bypass of that system was always gonna be nerfed.
The height filter was removed because it easily and cheaply bypassed something. I state what I THINK and presume, I'm not a dev nor do I speak from them, but their intentions are clear - they didn't want the glicthy exploit bases making people immune to hordes. The height filter - combined with the blade trap - allowed people to continue being immune to the horde. THAT is why it had to go. Cheap, easy immunity to horde night is not what the devs want to be the standard gameplay experience - if it's what you want you can roll it back or mod it; but it's not what they want for the core game.
Turrets shoot em in the back, ramps to blade tramps, containing and exploding, herding and shooting, avoiding or running; or blowing them up at optimal moments to take out others - there are 6 possible routes to deal with them (or not) which can be experimented with and explored; so it is disingenuous to claim there is 'only one way', so please stop.
As for feedback; 'we hate it, remove it.' is not useful feedback. As i said; the first feedback they get is ALWAYS 'we hate this change, change it back' - they're waiting for the 'we have now tried these things, here is our experience'. People who have stopped playing because they hate it and won't angage with it are not good feedback. People who have modded them out after trying one or two things are better feedback, but the people who are trying multiple different things and feeding back are the ones who will complete the feedback cycle before the Devs have the information they want to start balancing it.
Again - the majority of people who are complaining about this seem to - at the end of the day - want a cheap, easy way to be immune to horde night; and that's NOT the game the devs have been designing.
Your choices are - apply that alleged creativity to the new problem without giving up because it's not cheap and easy; stop playing until the feedback is in and the devs decide how and what to nerf / change / improve or remove to address the experience they get from the players who are currently applying creativity to the problem; or mod it out / get someone to mod it out - but accept you are not playign the game as intended, and that's okay - but not something the Devs are necessarily gonna take on board.
RipClaw
Hunter
I didn't ask anywhere that the game be changed due to the demolisher, but I showed the problems that need to be overcome to build a base that can kill the demolisher in Vanilla without causing the explosion. All I do is give feedback on the demolisher the way I see it.
If I want to change the game I do it myself. A modlet that changes the properties of the demolisher or completely removes him from the game is done in 5 minutes. XPath is not very complicated.
Kalen
Survivor
You certainly like to build those straw men.... has anyone actually said that? It seems to me that the majority of the complaints is that there doesn't appear to be a way to deal with demolishers other than shooting them. People are used to having multiple ways to deal with zombies, some passive some active. Wanting a more passive way to deal with demolishers does not equal wanting an easy way to deal with them.
My apologies, Ripclaw, I'm getting slightly headspun by all the people finding different ways of saying it, but you are quite right, that is not something you have asked for, indeed I realise you are doing quite a bit of in depth testing - so please forgive my mistake.
I wish you the best of luck in further testing, but I do think it's gonna be a very expensive and time consuming thing to make a base which passively kills or allows the player to sit back without getting stuck in. Guns have always been a part of the game, and I'd predict they will remain so; and if you choose not to use them it's likely to make things harder. I'll be feeding back on my own experience with the windy wall and moat, and then plan to try building a big mousetrap style obstacle course if that doesn't work; so we'll see how it goes.
But my ideas don't ALL include guns
Yes they have, and continue to; although not directly because nobody wants to admit it. It is apparent from reading what people are missing, what they are complaining about and the specific they are complaining about.
'I like the old build style cos... architecture..not for the glitch.'
Cool - you can still build like that, you'll just have to defend it better.
'I don't want to defend it better.'
You mean you want the glitch back?
'No... I just want the same tactic to work.'
It only worked because of the glitch.
'Is there anything different that still gives me the same effect as the glitch?'
Nope.
'Thats bull!'
Because you want the glitch?
'No!'
Then build something different.
'Okay, but I don't want to build anything that can be broken into or destroyed.'
Everything can be broken into or destroyed, unless you are clever, invest time and effort.
'Is there an easier, cheaper quicker way?'
Like a glitch?
'NO!'
I've posted multiple suggestions, and am exploring more - as are many other people; the reason you aren't hearing it is because we're spending our time playing, trying and trying again instead of trying one thing then coming on here to demand it be changed.
You want a passive way to deal with them? Go find it; stop complaining that you can't think of one yourself and expect someone else to post it here for you or for the devs to change the game. IF you don't want to do that, roll it back to 17 or 16 in the meantime and wait; or find someone to mod it or explain modding it to you.
Why is this so hard? If you want to explore dealing with them, do; and feedback. If you don't, roll back or mod.
Kalen
Survivor
Got it... so when you say "yes they have" what you're really saying is "no they haven't, but thats how I'm interpreting it".
You may be right.... or you may just be reading into peoples comments what you expected to hear.
I suspect you're not talking to me here, since I haven't complained about demolishers at all. Not a fan of them, but mostly because I think the concept of them is ridiculous (to be fair I've always thought the same of cops).
However, you are again making the assumption that people haven't been testing different strategies. Maybe they've tested even more than you have but haven't come up with a solution. Maybe there isn't a solution.... I honestly don't know as I haven't tried. I've been using an active defense in A18.
What about the cheesing TFP are using? More and more unrealistic, glowing "boss zombies" are hardly adding to immersion and are leaning far too far towards arcade shooter.
As people build better defences all we get are more "specials" to tear them down. Its well established that the game will never have the numbers it needs for proper hordes, so it appears more and more invented "specials" are always just over the horizon.
Not denying plenty enjoy demolishers etc, but for every great defence there will be something glowing in the wings. If the game has to always win by producing bigger bullet sponges its always going to be a war of attrition you cant win.
You have to use guns now and all the manufacturing headaches that come with them and that really does become a grind just to get enough ammo for another blood moon.
As people build better defences all we get are more "specials" to tear them down. Its well established that the game will never have the numbers it needs for proper hordes, so it appears more and more invented "specials" are always just over the horizon.
Not denying plenty enjoy demolishers etc, but for every great defence there will be something glowing in the wings. If the game has to always win by producing bigger bullet sponges its always going to be a war of attrition you cant win.
You have to use guns now and all the manufacturing headaches that come with them and that really does become a grind just to get enough ammo for another blood moon.
Some people have come right out and said it, others it's fairly apparent because they are only specifying the one or two pre 18 techniques which relied on glitches to function. They are ignoring or dismissing alternatives out of hand because they are too expensive, time consuming or involve them doing something differently.
I think it is a safe understanding that if they are insisting that they are annoyed the glitches have been bypassed, and want them restored or the demolisher removed - or some undefined solution which has that effect - that yes, that is what they are saying.
It would appear I am not talking about you, yes, but It is apparent from particular posts across the forum that the people most vocally demanding Demolishers removed, or made 'easy' have not tried other things, and are unwilling to do so - either because it's too hard, too expensive or too time consuming.
A comparison is easy to make with the people saying, for example, the game is too hard because they can't kill zombies with tier 1 weapons easily. Don't want to turn their settings down, they don't want to mod the stats to make them better, they don't want to go find better weapons or perk up - they want to kill zeds on day 1 with no skill and a tier 1 weapon.
Im not talking to anyone saying 'this is hard, here's what I've tried, what other ideas are people trying' - I'm talking to the people saying 'we've tried this one or two ways and it's not easy yet - make it easy.'
I'm trying to point out that every single alpha and every single change gets a few weeks where the majority of posts are initial responses - whether 'we love this' or 'we hate this' - usually the latter - and that TFP tend to ignore it until they are content with the stable branch and players have had adequate time to get past their initial thoughts and have tried, talked over, viewed and explored the new content and give a higher body of varied feedback for them to start taking more seriously.
I've recommended people remember this is a feedback and development cycle; give their feedback and move on - and wait for the feedback to properly processed and then acted upon - and if they can't wait roll it back or mod it in the meantime if they are unable to have fun - but still there are people saying 'this is bad and we hate it; there is no way / only one way to deal with it' when they clearly haven't tried multiple ways yet.
I'm only making these assumptions when it is apparent from the content of the post - although I'm not perfect so I've obviously read a few people wrong - but I maintain the core of the most vocal criticism is 'this should be cheap, easy and - pardon the pun - bomb proof, or else it's no fun, and it's a sentiment which I challenge.
It's been a fascinating chat with the people who have decided to engage though.
Earlier alpha's were arcade shooters too. Alpha 1 you cut down trees with shotgun blasts. It's leaning back and forward as balance is sought between SP, PVP and PVE, as well as the story-orientated version they are working towards - and it's still a work in progress.
It's considered this game may struggle to have the numbers it needs, but the Devs are already working on improved encounters systems to try and simulate that better, and bandits / NPC factions will be using guns, explosives and traps of their own. The current stage doesn't have those things, so bits are lacking and other bits are placeholders and early attempts to gauge how base killing things might work.
There's nothing wrong with the Devs trying to add things to shake the game towards their own intended vision; and there's nothing to say that the features being added will be there as they are in the final game, and the final game may have story mode / sandbox mode with different dynamics.
You don't have to kill the horde, you don't have to kill all of it, and you don't have to use guns to do either - there are multiple options available which continue to be worked on and feedback is being listened to; and will continue to be developed.
RipClaw
Hunter
My current base with 33 dart traps needs plenty of iron but so far it's holding up well. I am still looking for ways to optimize the base. For example I want to modify the base so that I can repair the electric fences during the horde and reload the dart traps if necessary.My apologies, Ripclaw, I'm getting slightly headspun by all the people finding different ways of saying it, but you are quite right, that is not something you have asked for, indeed I realise you are doing quite a bit of in depth testing - so please forgive my mistake.
I wish you the best of luck in further testing, but I do think it's gonna be a very expensive and time consuming thing to make a base which passively kills or allows the player to sit back without getting stuck in. Guns have always been a part of the game, and I'd predict they will remain so; and if you choose not to use them it's likely to make things harder. I'll be feeding back on my own experience with the windy wall and moat, and then plan to try building a big mousetrap style obstacle course if that doesn't work; so we'll see how it goes.
But my ideas don't ALL include guns
Guns may have been in the game since the start but they where always optional. I never had to resort to guns until alpha 17. I always got along with the crossbow and the club. In alpha 16 I used e.g. exploding bolts but they are pretty expensive since alpha 17.
Last edited by a moderator:
BobTheBard
Refugee
For my part it's not about being cheap and it's not about being easy, it's about being two similar but not quite the same things. I want it to be mostly reliable and within the capability of the average player to figure out.
Cost isn't a big thing, since once you get a passive defense set up and it keeps working, then there you go. If you don't want to keep throwing expensive consumable resources (e.g. bullets) at a problem then you're going to have a much higher initial cost in both time and resources, but the upside is that the higher initial cost repays itself over time by being much cheaper to maintain - It's easier, quicker, and less expensive to repair a few blade traps and concrete or steel blocks than it is to make a few thousand bullets. Getting a strong passive defense up should be expensive, but it should make up for that by being cheaper to maintain than throwing thousands of bullets at the problem. Demolishers upend that by making it more expensive to maintain a base than just mowing hordes down like Rambo, and that's a major part of what I don't like.
Reliability is also important. I want to know that my base is probably going to survive the horde night before the horde attacks it. Maybe the high-risk playstyle is favored by some people, even the devs, but I'm not one of them. I'm a builder and a thinker rather than a run-and-gun player, and my objective (though I've been slacking on it lately since I don't especially enjoy A18 as a solo experience and my friends already lost interest) is always to build a base that I know can hold up. Combine it with my views on cost above and you can see how the present state of Demolishers really messes with that and why I personally find them detrimental to my experience.
The other important part is that it should be within the capability of the average player to come up with more than one solution. The issue I'm seeing is that most of the clever non-shooty ways people have come up with are being declared glitches or exploits once they become popular enough, then get taken away. This goes against the idea of an open-world game where you should be able to have those options, but is very much in line with the action game mentality that we're seeing more and more of where the answer to most problems is some variation of 'Have you tried shooting it more?' It also stifles creativity, since once a reliable way to mitigate the problem is found almost everyone is going to use that one solution because they either can't come up with any on their own or don't want to invest the time required. The harder and more time-consuming you make it to find an answer, the fewer people are going to have the patience to find it and the more people are going to look to copy something that already exists. You'll always have lazy people who want to copy existing designs, but the harder you make it the more you frustrate even normally independent people into just copying something successful.
I am interested to hear how this progresses. I'm long used to dart traps being basically worthless from previous alphas, so I might have to start fiddling with them again once I get back into the game. Cheers!
Ghostlight
Refugee
Well I hate modding and love options, so...
Ghostlight
Refugee
Makes me think you have no faced a bunch of them. None of these suggestions really work. They turn if shot in the back, you absolutely cannot use turrets at all. Blade traps set them off more or less automatically (other than the ceiling trick which I'm hearing has been removed). Herding and shooting....they will explode and destroy whatever you herd them into (potentially the best suggestion you made). Avoiding and running....bah.
OK dokey, what do you do with them?
Look they can be dealt with, no one is saying they cannot. But the bill in doing do is often so huge due to the destruction they cause and the ammo required because traps are a liability means people would be spending 5 to 6 days in every 7 mining constantly to rebuild and rearm. No one wants that.
Not cheap, but interactive and affordable.
Please if your experience is a half dozen of them at GS 160, please go away. If instead it's tons of them often many at once, at late gamestage, tell us what you do to handle them?
Last edited by a moderator:
RipClaw
Hunter
At the moment it is just a 3-block-wide corridor through which the zombies run. It is a similar construction to this base but without the gap:
With a 3m deep trench around the base I make sure that the zombies run into the entrance instead of bashing against the part of the game where I am standing in.
Ghostlight
Refugee
Dart are useless against unless you play on easier difficulties. These guys are bullet sponges to the extreme. No idea how many Darts it would take to bring them down, but to put it in context, unless you are using AP ammo, they can easily take an entire clip to the head from a tier 6 AK with good mods, and still be standing, and I had 4/5 Machine Gunner last time too. This is only on Warrior. You can do the math from there. And remember, just one bullet stray and hitting the chest and they will blow, chain reacting with every other Demolisher in the area - and since they are hard to kill, there will LOTS of others waiting for the chain reaction. When they come one at a time (i.e early, when you first meet them, they are not quite so bad).
p.s. Meant to say also, you cannot just leave them alone either, *something* eventually sets them off if there is fighting going on of any kind. My best guess is it is glancing blows from nearby zombies who have started hitting random blocks. But I'm not sure.
Last edited by a moderator:
Someone made a 5 wide and ~10 deep funnel with dart traps overhead shooting down and a lot of electric wires crossing that space. He then sent in 25 Demos. He fired maybe 3 shots to finish the front Demos that had a chance to actually get through, the rest was killed by wires and darts.
Does a front block diminish the explosion of blocks behind it?
Owch. Little bit rude.
Have played through to game stage 200+ a few times now; have not been focussing exclusively on Demolishers yet - mostly exploring Perks and pregen maps, so in first playthrough they blew up my stuff and I just stayed on foot and legged it until felt 'finished'.
Second playthrough I went with small kill box with a winding path leading them in on level ground, and shotgun / dart traps shooting from above and behind, and electric fences across the paths, but had similar problems to others - repairing the fences and refuelling the darts traps was tricky - but this had some potential. Perhaps a side path, upper or lower walkway would provide the access needed without getting dug out. Easier in multiplayer if one person can do repair runs. As I played, I Kept extending the winding path; but need to work on lines of sight - but it meant explosions only ever took out a small bit and rarely a full on 'break in'; and with some tweaking could provide a longer term opportunity. Didn't have a pit, didn't have spikes, didn't use half blocks to let dogs and crawlers through ahead.
Third playthrough I was working on retreating through POIs and leaving traps behind, which went well, but did mean a lot of POIs got destroyed. It has potential, but think it's a little too much for one player; and would benefit from more team play and depends upon you getting a row of favourable POIs together.
Last game I was trying to advance on Kage's core, but I got too ambitious for 1 player and it was just never gonna be 'ready' - and I did not care for the INT build very much so abandoned that - shall watch how Kage gets on to see if it feels worth a revisit.
Current playthrough I'm working on a gravity belt.
Next up Im either gonna go for the raised curtain wall corridor winding around a core base, with winding pit that leads them back up to the start - or starts, and 'gatehouses' at each 'start' and smaller gatehouses along the path to hold and fall as they progress = but intend to be mostly working with cobblestone on those, understanding it's designed to fall, but in an order, and cheap and quick to fix back up. Solid core is where to fall back to if it gets crazy, and get out plan is a must.
Im toying with taking the hotel POI's and trying to make a little fort on each floor which can be retreated upward, take out all but one stairway from each floor, with a quick escape from the roof if needed.
But for the record, you CAN use turrets. Don't be silly. Blade traps only set them off if they're hitting their chests or if you use them to kill them from below - just doing damage to legs or heads as they pass is still doable, and you can turn them off to let Demo's through if you need - but Im gonna investigate placing them so they only hit them on the non explody side and see if it's possible.
Herding is fine, and if there's a way back out they shouldn't be exploding, the point is to try and shear off specific ones - and it's relatively simple to shear off faster ones - so any reliable hobbling of them or the non-demo's will make separating them easier.
Avoiding and running remain viable back ups; and your deliberate choose to disuse particular options - as part of a larger design - makes your claim that nothing works sound very petulant.
The charge is that they are OP - and that's been accepted.
The charge is that nothing affordable works - that's not proven.
In this thread alone - which isn't even meant to be about Demolishers - there are multiple things which can be investigated which would address, lessen or potentially one day solve it;.
They're gonna be toned down or replaced eventually, in the meantime if you hate them that much turn them off in the XML