Something else we noticed last night, with two players looking at gamestage, the numbers were completely different on their systems.
I'm wondering if game stage calculation has a bug, or if the menu display had a bug reporting incorrect numbers? As I mentioned previously in another reply, if the party shared range is increased, the HUD display doesn't reflect that change, showing you are out of range, but still getting the bonus xp.
After sleeping on our experience yesterday, these are the combined things as far as game difficulty and zombie interaction that would help:
Lower zombie block damage to 75% or 50%..maybe tie that to difficulty level? On nomad, I'm thinking 50% might be more reasonable to make building and defending a base viable.
Gamestage calculation is way too high...I had 12 deaths by day 20, was only using reinforced club and iron arrows, but my gamestage is 65.
We are seeing a ton of irradiated and ferals, and a visit from screamers every 10 minutes in game. I think gamestage calculation should be cut in half so or destruction capability matches zombie difficulty.
The combination of these two changes would put the current difficulty we are seeing at day 20 to day 40, and by then I would think we would have better weapon capability, turrets, and armor of some kind.
As it is currently, creating a defendable base isn't even in the cards on day 20, and after watching how fast they blow through cobblestone, if we don't have massive amounts of cement by day 30, we'll have to just let zombies trash pois an not really defend at all.
Its killing us not being able to fight a 7 day horde in at least some manner, but we don't mind not being able to really have a dependable base early game. Day 30-40 seem reasonable, stretching game progress more towards later game. Kind of like walking dead, you scrabble to survive early game, and later game try to fight back and create something sustainable.
The zombie strength is fighting feels great, but melee is too risky too often at day 20 because its too easy to be killed...guns just attract way too many zombies (good).
As previously mentioned, we are also getting too many screamers, ferals, wights, and spitters to keep you with.
Quests are a great way to increase our character's equipment, but most take a full day to complete, so you can really only do 2 a week if you want to be able to upkeep your supplies and progress what you can eat and craft.
It's great we have more to do, but zombie difficulty is ramping up too fast to keep pace with.
We'll try max alive at 30 today (half vanilla) and horde number per player at 4 (30% reduction) today to see if it helps performance enough to make horde nights and screamer hordes playable.
If these don't help, I fear a17 will be unplayable for horde night base building.
(Maybe a stronger block for base building can be also be added in combination with lower zombie block damage to make base building a viable option? Or maybe just increase concrete block durability? Day 14 hordes shouldn't be able to tear down a large concrete building like the pop n pills, fire station, or the crack a book. Save that for day 50
)
Please do NOT nerf zombie player attacks or ai..that feels great. We want it tough, but fair.
Also perks need to list requirements to avoid progress confusion learning the new system. Popup tooltips over the perks listing requirements would be clean and user friendly. (Maybe also make them list in red if not available, and white if available as a visual que?)
It's very frustrating to think you've unlocked a new perk you want, only to find out its gated by something else.
Last observation, tools should have a full list of its benefits, even if it's a popup tooltip in the menu, it scrollable list.
Other games also have an encyclopedia listing ingredients and hints where to obtain them.... maybe this could be added, and it could unlock more items as they were either discovered, or as intelligence levels were unlocked?
(I REALLY like this last idea, and it could aid testers as well as an up to date in game resource on game changes.)
Right now we have no real good idea where to locate acid for making bicycle tires, for instance.
