PC Bullet sponges

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badmojo

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Here is my dilemma when it comes to the difficulty settings in 7dtd. On the one hand I love paying the price for a simple mistake. Screwing up the timing or not paying attention to whats around you should be a huge setback. But, I can't stand bullet sponges. When I have to hit a zombie upwards of 5 times with a metal club, or an AK, it stops feeling fun, it just feels dumb, and the flaws of it being a videogame become exaggerated. When you strike a zombie with a club or shoot them with a gun and there is literally no reaction animation, there is a disconnect that pulls you out of the virtual world and reminds you loud and clear 'THIS IS JUST A SILLY GAME', it stops feeling immersive and starts feeling like we're gaming the mechanics and simply draining a healthbar, which is not enjoyable to me.

My options are to play on insane and enjoy the punishment of taking hits, while suffering through the bullet sponge effect. Or play on the easiest and enjoy the combat, but know I will never be in any real danger unless I am truly careless.

Last night I tried to melee a pack of ferals on the helipad of the big pills building, not knowing they were ferals when I attacked. Due to it being on easiest I wasn't killed, I managed to blast them all away with my AK before my health reached 0. But I want those mistakes to cost me my life, but at the same time I don't want to spend ten years hitting every zombie a bunch more times.

I know I can edit the files and give zombies stronger hits on lower difficulty levels, or give them less health points on higher difficulty levels, that's certainly a solution to my dilemma. But, I am posting this to hopefully get some other peoples opinions on the bullet sponge zombies and their place in 7dtd. Maybe a discussion could change the direction the developers take zombie hitpoints.

Do you guys enjoy the amount of damage it takes to kill a zombie on higher difficulty levels? I understand the more perks we put in, the less hits it will take to kill a zombie, but is that really the kind of progression we want in this game?

The slower and grindy'er the game is, the less likely a player will get themselves into troubling situations. If 1 or 2 zombies are a hassle, players will put their full attention into dealing with them, meaning if a few more pop out of nowhere, it's nothing, the player is already playing defensively, it just means a bit longer until they relax again. But, if a player is complacent while clearing a POI and confident they can stand their ground and take out the 2 zombies quickly, they are more likely to push in and take more risks, which means if a few more fall from the ceiling then the player will probably not be able to deal with them as easily because they weren't playing defensively like the guy fighting bullet sponges.

You see it on zombie shows like the walking dead, they will kill so many walkers it starts to become second nature, but then when a door flings opens and a horde spills out, they find themselves in a dangerous situation and have to run for it or fight for their life. If every walker they encounter put them on their heels, they would be less likely to find themselves backed into a corner.

 
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Completely agree here. I should be afraid of zeds, cause they can kill me, not cause I dont have time to kill them.

 
I wholeheartedly agree. I would make a thread about bullet sponging myself when the A17 dust had settled. I avoid playing on the highest difficulties because of this reason.

But I don't want to talk about difficulty settings, it's the concept of irradiated zombies as a means to challenge the player in higher gamestages I want to talk about.

There are many kinds of difficulty - bullet sponging is a linear, uninteresting way to raise difficulty. More creative ways can be used, like random combat behavior (think faatal is working on something similar?), more animations, more impactful special zombie abilities (status effects etc) and many others.

Really wanted to write a wall of text about it but I can't atm, too tired.

I know I can edit the files and give zombies stronger hits on lower difficulty levels, or give them less health points on higher difficulty levels, that's certainly a solution to my dilemma.
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It's not that simple if the game is balanced around bullet sponges like irradiated zombies to threaten you towards the higher gamestages, because you wouldn't get the same experience compared to when the game is balanced around different kinds of difficulty.

 
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[...]Do you guys enjoy the amount of damage it takes to kill a zombie on higher difficulty levels? I understand the more perks we put in, the less hits it will take to kill a zombie, but is that really the kind of progression we want in this game?

[...]
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Nobody really likes bullet sponges, and this issue has been raised a few times with various suggestions to resolve it. I do recall an excellent, very elaborate post on the subject shortly after A16 was released.

The problem is that most suggestions would require a lot of additional work while extra HP is very easy to add.

 
The real solution in my opinion is going to be to steer away from the bullet sponge school of thought and increase the danger of zombies by utilizing more creative mechanics. I know this can take heavy development time, but that is what an alpha is for, and let's face it, this game isn't getting any younger. Truthfully, it's spent more time in early access than many games today remain relevant after release.

But, I digress. My no-nonsense solution would be to make the zombies truly unique. We have a few that stand out, such as spider zombies, and with their new long jump, it increases the danger of fighting them without needing a significant increase in HP. Now picture a looting run. You enter a POI and start scanning the room, paying close attention to corners and areas they could be hiding. You spot your first target. If it's Marlene, Joe, Darlene, Arlene, a nurse, Boe, Yo, skateboarder, businessman, or any of the other normal zombies, do you really care? No, you're going to dispatch them with your normal method. The only thing you care about is if they are feral or irradiated,or both. This is an absolute waste of potential. Each zombie could potentially have a unique strength and weakness. Cops can spit, the fat zombies have high block damage, spider zombies can scale walls and now long jump, football players can run in daytime, soldiers have high HP (presumably due to the armor), Burned zombies can ignite you, etc etc etc. Each zombie should have something that makes them unique in the way you should handle them and not just their loot tables and minor differences in HP. Nurse zombies for example can have a higher chance to cause an infection. Stands to reason since nurses are typically more exposed to diseases than most and in their undead iteration might carry more as a result. This would warrant a lot of careful thought and consideration, but it would change the game for the better since you would have to actually learn each type, what it's unique trait is, and how to deal with it. Some traits would be fairly benign unless in the right situations. some would be dangerous as hell and need to be mitigated/avoided at all costs. Something for TFP to think about that would add immense value to the game without a massive amount of development time due to the foundation already being in place. At this point, it would just be a matter of tweaking and adding some creative mechanics.

 
The real solution in my opinion is going to be to steer away from the bullet sponge school of thought and increase the danger of zombies by utilizing more creative mechanics. I know this can take heavy development time, but that is what an alpha is for, and let's face it, this game isn't getting any younger. Truthfully, it's spent more time in early access than many games today remain relevant after release.
But, I digress. My no-nonsense solution would be to make the zombies truly unique. We have a few that stand out, such as spider zombies, and with their new long jump, it increases the danger of fighting them without needing a significant increase in HP. Now picture a looting run. You enter a POI and start scanning the room, paying close attention to corners and areas they could be hiding. You spot your first target. If it's Marlene, Joe, Darlene, Arlene, a nurse, Boe, Yo, skateboarder, businessman, or any of the other normal zombies, do you really care? No, you're going to dispatch them with your normal method. The only thing you care about is if they are feral or irradiated,or both. This is an absolute waste of potential. Each zombie could potentially have a unique strength and weakness. Cops can spit, the fat zombies have high block damage, spider zombies can scale walls and now long jump, football players can run in daytime, soldiers have high HP (presumably due to the armor), Burned zombies can ignite you, etc etc etc. Each zombie should have something that makes them unique in the way you should handle them and not just their loot tables and minor differences in HP. Nurse zombies for example can have a higher chance to cause an infection. Stands to reason since nurses are typically more exposed to diseases than most and in their undead iteration might carry more as a result. This would warrant a lot of careful thought and consideration, but it would change the game for the better since you would have to actually learn each type, what it's unique trait is, and how to deal with it. Some traits would be fairly benign unless in the right situations. some would be dangerous as hell and need to be mitigated/avoided at all costs. Something for TFP to think about that would add immense value to the game without a massive amount of development time due to the foundation already being in place. At this point, it would just be a matter of tweaking and adding some creative mechanics.
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This makes more sense now than ever being that zombies don't really drop loot anymore. If they do, it's the "good stuff"... typically ammo, weaponry. Businessman would drop money a lot, but not anymore, so what is his purpose?

Speaking of different traits, I find that that the zombies that were considerably tougher are not as tough anymore. I remember always avoiding the fat tourist, biker, and lumberjack with first couple days. Now it doesn't matter. They may take 2 more power shots, but it's still basically the same.

 
This makes more sense now than ever being that zombies don't really drop loot anymore. If they do, it's the "good stuff"... typically ammo, weaponry. Businessman would drop money a lot, but not anymore, so what is his purpose?
Speaking of different traits, I find that that the zombies that were considerably tougher are not as tough anymore. I remember always avoiding the fat tourist, biker, and lumberjack with first couple days. Now it doesn't matter. They may take 2 more power shots, but it's still basically the same.
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AH! There you go! Biker zombies. Wears a helmet, so reduced headshot damage...same for military and utility workers. Fat zombies can have high resistance to blunt weapons due to all the added cushioning. See, this is fleshing out already and we're just a bunch of forum rats!

 
I think this sounds like a great idea and wondering if that could not be accomplished by simply utilizing the new buff system and extending each zombie entity with additional buff/debuff (however You'd want to call it)...

sensei

 
Zombies are spongy in the early game, when you need 10 arrows to the head to kill them. But if the game throws the same type of zombies at you on day 1 and day 1000, they need to be designed so that they don't drop dead on day 1000 if you only heavily breath in their general direction.

There is a super easy solution: Zones, aka biomes, of different difficulty. Have a large wasteland with very hard zombies. Early game, the player will go the other way if they see that biome, late game they have a challenge left. Put desirable stuff in there, good loot, quests, materials, so everybody wants to go there. Daily challenges can be created by wandering hordes. Currently, at least that was the final state in A16, and the xml does not show any apparent difference, wandering hordes only cover 50 days, so on day 51 you get the wandering horde of day 1. Which is pretty lame, obviously.

Then again, I don't dislike it at all when you've grown strong during a game, so that you can one shot all kinds of trashmobs, on the contrary, that's a lot of fun. But I agree, that the game (vanilla) needs an end-game challenge, that is not just the bloodmoon horde, which is practically 15 minutes of gameplay out of 420.

 
I also despise bullet sponges. It is a cheap attempt at difficulty. It doesn't make things any more challenging, only more tedious.

I feel that if the zombies hit harder and there were a lot more of them - but they had less HP of course - then the challenge would be much better and more fun.

 
I also despise bullet sponges. It is a cheap attempt at difficulty. It doesn't make things any more challenging, only more tedious.
I feel that if the zombies hit harder and there were a lot more of them - but they had less HP of course - then the challenge would be much better and more fun.
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That is exactly my opinion and how I mod the game. Lots of enemies, dangerous enemies, but they are (mostly) easy to kill, and if they are not, they are in a zone that the player knows to avoid.
 
Something that might be interesting to increase difficulty is that some of the POIs have an alarm system, so if you aren't careful and accidentally set it off it will 'call' in all the zombies in the neighbourhood. Spawning in a whole bunch of zombies around the area during the alarm would be okay since it would simulate them coming out of the woodwork. You could either disable the alarm before it gets set off, destroy it while it's going off, or just walk away and let the battery drain over time. I think mechanics like this would allow mass spawning of zombies without feeling random and unfair.

I just want more zombies, end of story. I want so many zombies that I become overwhelmed.

 
Those that are clamoring for more zombies are on the right track. Zombies that hit harder/stun/cause bleeding/charge/more special attacks more frequently but have lower health is the answer to these difficulty concerns.

Even just adding more zombies out in the world, say, increasing the frequency of wandering hordes to one every 10 minutes would be the answer. People would start carrying around molotovs and land mines and using automatic weapons and things like that instead of just a bow and arrow the entire game from 1 to 100.

 
AH! There you go! Biker zombies. Wears a helmet, so reduced headshot damage...same for military and utility workers. Fat zombies can have high resistance to blunt weapons due to all the added cushioning. See, this is fleshing out already and we're just a bunch of forum rats!
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Businessman throws paperwork in your face, obscuring your vison temporarily.

Nurse injects you with various drugs giving you various debuffs. I like this thread!

 
Who doesnt love shooting arrow after arrow after arrow after arrow into a zombie to have it fall down to only see it rise up again? I mean geesh people ;) #sarcasmoff

 
Zombies have more then 1 hitbox (head). I've had some intresting results by hitting

them in the leg, and when they bend over, another hit to the top of their head.

 
Zombies have more then 1 hitbox (head). I've had some intresting results by hittingthem in the leg, and when they bend over, another hit to the top of their head.
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Hand works too, sometimes. But what I hate is when they do "oh no! my leg!" animation, but their model keeps moving towards ya :D .

 
Completely agree here. I should be afraid of zeds, cause they can kill me, not cause I dont have time to kill them.
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I 100% agree with this statement, right here. Zombies should be dangerous because of their abilities and their numbers, not their healthpoints.

Not to mention that firearms in this game are actually BB guns.

 
I 100% agree with this statement, right here. Zombies should be dangerous because of their abilities and their numbers, not their healthpoints.
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Pretty much this - hopefully, they will slowly start heading to that direction and get rid of sponges.

 
My advice would be :

Perception ( increases ranged weapon damage ) - Boom headshot

Agility ( gives stamina btw ) - Hidden Strike

Result 1 hit Headshot most ferals including cops.

When shooting irradiated feral wights, 4 headshots with iron arrows - ofcourse pick them 1 by one, don't just drop on them and trigger them all. Shoot arrows at closets so you break the doors and reveal them, better than letting them jumping at you while you try to sneak by.

And I never understood people hitting zombies in the body, legs... 2 power hits in the head ( every zombie movie says kill shoot them in the head ). Day 1 killing feral Military zombies with a wooden club. But take 1 at the time, dont just jump in the group and play Rambo.

Birds 1 hit with club and you get feathers, just practice the timing - really easy kills, keep your eyes up and on places you learn they usualy spawn - roofs and alike - snipe them with bow as well.

Now level 65 atm and when entering dungeon houses snipe them with a bow - 1 hit kills on hte lower levels, but when goint to the attic or roof bring with you some wood and make couple of spikes and than you can even melee them, hit them in the head ofc.

But to conclude come prepared - I love the fact that you can't just go everywhere until high enough level. One POI made me run on day one - construction site that is building a basement with a large tunnel, that I ofcourse went exploring just to find tombie bear on day 1!! :D :D

Yes there are areas you cant go right away so pick your battles wisely.

And yes there could be less ferals guarding the loot in the attics, and sneak could be better so you dont trigger them all jut by "falling" from a small stone, cant jump 1 block high while sneaking... - it will be fixed I m sure, but for the first time it feels like post apocalyptic world that tries to kill you from the start - thats why its post apocalyptic world and not a Disney world.

 
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