PC Dynamic Gamestage scaling

[Solomon]

This is an idea what came to my mind after seeing many posts about how the game handles balance currently. One of the reoccuring complains about A18's loot system was that as soon as you got your AK/shotty you pretty much won the game and A19 hasnt done anything about this other than making it slower to reach that point aka added in grind.

I thought why not instead of enforcing the gamestage on the player the player dictates the gamestage itself.

Currently the gamestage system is as primitive as it can get, you live for long, increase your level it rises if you die it sinks a bit. This practically means that if you manage to somehow make a steel base on day 1 the gamestage will still think that you are cobbling together wood frames as walls.

My proposal would be a system what always sees your power level and adjusts the situation to it.

The key factors of if a player will survive are the following:

1. Armor and health
   
2. Weapons and their Ammo
   
3. Where the player is
   

Now the dynamic gamestage scaling would take all these information and formulate enemies that are fitting the challange for the player with simple rules:

1. The more health and armor a player has the more damage the undead does.
   
2. The game checks for melee weapons and ranged weapons owned by the player and sets enemy hp to a matching level so the zeds are neither easy to kill nor impossible
   
3. Block damage is dependant on where the player is, if your house is mainly wood the zeds deal low damage, if its steel they deal more but its balanced around the idea that certain blocks are weak and others are strong so they never turn into home wreckers.
   
4. The game utilizes fodder, regular and elite zombies in random patterns so each enemy feels different.
   

These are just baselines but i feel like a lot of balance related problems can be fixed by making the game adapt instead of taking out the sandbox elements what make this game great.

 

[Bashtiks]

Sry but I think its the worse idea I ever have seen on this forum.. 

 

[RipClaw]

There are games where such a system makes sense but I don't think that "7 Days to die" is such a game.

Progress is a part of the game and if the game constantly adapts the opponents to your equipment you wouldn't feel any progress.
 

Moreover, such a system would be easy to trick. During the Horde, I simply don't wear armor and use only primitive weapons. Then I only get easy opponents. 

 

[Boidster]

1) Day 7, 21:55 - Drop AK, auto-shotgun, steel armor on ground; walk into cactus until health is 10%

2) Day 7, 22:01 - Pick up AK, auto-shotgun, steel armor, apply medkit

3) ...

4) Win

It's an interesting thought experiment, but I think game stage is pretty much correctly structured now. How long have you survived and what have you done during that time (i.e. how many levels have you gained)? The trick is in balancing the rest of the game properly as game stage increases.

 

[Solomon]

There are games where such a system makes sense but I don't think that "7 Days to die" is such a game.

Progress is a part of the game and if the game constantly adapts the opponents to your equipment you wouldn't feel any progress.
 

Moreover, such a system would be easy to trick. During the Horde, I simply don't wear armor and use only primitive weapons. Then I only get easy opponents. 

1) Day 7, 21:55 - Drop AK, auto-shotgun, steel armor on ground; walk into cactus until health is 10%

2) Day 7, 22:01 - Pick up AK, auto-shotgun, steel armor, apply medkit

3) ...

4) Win

It's an interesting thought experiment, but I think game stage is pretty much correctly structured now. How long have you survived and what have you done during that time (i.e. how many levels have you gained)? The trick is in balancing the rest of the game properly as game stage increases.

I kind of got inspired from the rumor i heard that the gamestage later on would get bonuses based on the area you spend your time in aka the forest gets 0 scaling while the wasteland gets a high scaling so you are rewarded for the harsher enviroment you are in.

 

[RipClaw]

I kind of got inspired from the rumor i heard that the gamestage later on would get bonuses based on the area you spend your time in aka the forest gets 0 scaling while the wasteland gets a high scaling so you are rewarded for the harsher enviroment you are in.

This is more than just a rumor. It has been confirmed that the developers plan to introduce it in A20. To be able to survive in environments with higher gamestage, the player has to be prepared. I have read that these areas are supposed to be radioactive and so the player either has to wear a protective suit or enough healing items to keep himself alive while trying to loot the POIs.

With your idea the environment adapts to the player. But you can abuse this. For example, if I walk through a POI with weak equipment, I have easy opponents. Then I loot the POI while wearing the best equipment I have to get better loot.

 

[Boidster]

I kind of got inspired from the rumor i heard that the gamestage later on would get bonuses based on the area you spend your time in aka the forest gets 0 scaling while the wasteland gets a high scaling so you are rewarded for the harsher enviroment you are in.

Makes sense. The key difference is that gamestage and the upcoming biome/POI scaling are for the most part out of the player's control. Except insofar as you can a) die a lot, 2) avoid earning XP/gaining levels, or iii) not go near biomes/POIs which are more difficult. So you can embrace or avoid activities and geography which will modify your gamestage, but you can't buy/loot/craft/wear things to change GS on a whim. Lucky Looter goggles being the exception, and only for loot RNG.

Your idea is good outside-the-box thinking, for sure; it just might not play out so well, as RipClaw describes.

I think the biome GS scaling will be "easy" (don't @ me Gazz!), but the POI scaling will be maybe a little harder. Maybe. I wonder how they will do it:

a) every POI in the wasteland biome (for example) will have sleepers that spawn at +25% gamestage, so that "2-story modern house" in the forest is full of Arlenes and Moes (GS+0; just normal zombies), but the same POI in a wasteland town is +25% (or whatever) GS and the sleepers are ferals or Wights. Basically just apply the biome adjustment to all POI sleepers.

or

b) every POI is individually adjusted to be GS +0/+25/+50/etc. so that "2-story modern house" is always just Arlenes and Moes wherever you find it (GS +0), but "Bob's Boars" is +25% GS wherever you find it. So you can do a "hard" GS+25 POI even within the "easy" forest biome where normal biome spawns are GS+0.

or

c) a combination, where each POI gets a GS adjustment and the biome it sits in adds a GS adjustment on top of that. So "Bob's Boars" gives GS+25% and if you find one in the Wasteland biome, you get another +25% from the biome. That makes Bob's Boars a hard-ish POI for n00bs in the forest, but also a hard-ish POI for higher-level players exploring the Wasteland.

Gazz said that POI scaling is on the to-do list so I expect it will be b) or c).

 

[Solomon]

With your idea the environment adapts to the player. But you can abuse this. For example, if I walk through a POI with weak equipment, I have easy opponents. Then I loot the POI while wearing the best equipment I have to get better loot.

Your idea is good outside-the-box thinking, for sure; it just might not play out so well, as RipClaw describes.

You two missed a line in my main post:

The game checks for melee weapons and ranged weapons owned by the player

Essentially the game checks all of your inventories and storage spaces to generate the gamestage so you cant just strip yourself to get easy to kill zombies.

The moment you actually own proper equipment the game scales that because why would you not use it?

The only way to abuse this system would be to throw out all your weapons and armors what you have anywhere before looting a poi and knowing people not many would will to test if their T6 ak will stay there while they beat up the undead for brass also this abuse would mean that you are always permanently hoard all your weapons, ammo and armor on yourself.

 

[meganoth]

You two missed a line in my main post:

Essentially the game checks all of your inventories and storage spaces to generate the gamestage so you cant just strip yourself to get easy to kill zombies.

The moment you actually own proper equipment the game scales that because why would you not use it?

The only way to abuse this system would be to throw out all your weapons and armors what you have anywhere before looting a poi and knowing people not many would will to test if their T6 ak will stay there while they beat up the undead for brass also this abuse would mean that you are always permanently hoard all your weapons, ammo and armor on yourself.

But you could stuff your equipment into the cupboard of a poi you have looted. So the game would need to go through every container in the world to do that? Probably easier would be to keep a list of the best stuff the player ever found, got, bought or crafted.

 

[RipClaw]

Essentially the game checks all of your inventories and storage spaces to generate the gamestage so you cant just strip yourself to get easy to kill zombies.

Yes, I can. For example, if I leave my equipment in a garbage can at a POI across the street, it is no longer in my storage. So the game can no longer capture it.

You also forget the technical limitations of the game. Chunks that are no longer needed will be unloaded to save memory. The game can not check the storage in this areas.

The moment you actually own proper equipment the game scales that because why would you not use it?

For the same reason that players double loot a POI when doing a quest or simply sneak into the loot room through the back entrance if they know where it is. High profit, low risk.

You seem like someone who enjoys fighting. But there are players who have no interest in fighting. They would then of course abuse the system in such a way that they have to fight as little as possible.
 

 

[Gazz]

Sounds like an idea to use in your next game.

 

[Solomon]

But you could stuff your equipment into the cupboard of a poi you have looted. So the game would need to go through every container in the world to do that? Probably easier would be to keep a list of the best stuff the player ever found, got, bought or crafted.

Yes, I can. For example, if I leave my equipment in a garbage can at a POI across the street, it is no longer in my storage. So the game can no longer capture it.

You also forget the technical limitations of the game. Chunks that are no longer needed will be unloaded to save memory. The game can not check the storage in this areas.

I might be wrong or this is some bug but i have a shamway box in one of the pois what i put in some broken glass somewhere around day 8 and it still has them despite day 35 has passed and we dont live there. Its outside of flagstone and bedroll range, it just doesnt reset unlike literally everything around it.

I assumed its because the game designated that one as player storage because i put stuff into it and based my suggestion on the idea that the game marks all storages what you put new items into as player storage.

 

[Kalen]

Essentially the game checks all of your inventories and storage spaces to generate the gamestage so you cant just strip yourself to get easy to kill zombies.

How would it handle it multiplayer?   If you got 2 people on a server not playing together, how would the game know who owns what?

 

[RipClaw]

I might be wrong or this is some bug but i have a shamway box in one of the pois what i put in some broken glass somewhere around day 8 and it still has them despite day 35 has passed and we dont live there. Its outside of flagstone and bedroll range, it just doesnt reset unlike literally everything around it.

This is neutral storage space. It's not assigned to you as a player. So, for example, you can't lock it.
 

I assumed its because the game designated that one as player storage because i put stuff into it and based my suggestion on the idea that the game marks all storages what you put new items into as player storage.

No this is not the case, otherwise you would not be able to hand over items in multiplayer by putting them into a container. You would have to unlock the container first if this was the case.

 

[Vedui]

So reading the question/poll, and then the text description itself there are some areas where they do not quite match.

Yes, I would like a dynamic gamestage. We have one. It grows as player level does, and as you stay alive, and reduces as you die. 

I thought why not instead of enforcing the gamestage on the player the player dictates the gamestage itself.

It is a novel concept. I've never quite seen a game allow that. "Today let's go with gamestage 1." ... "Tomorrow I'll try gamestage 500" ...

Currently the gamestage system is as primitive as it can get, you live for long, increase your level it rises if you die it sinks a bit. This practically means that if you manage to somehow make a steel base on day 1 the gamestage will still think that you are cobbling together wood frames as walls.

The game makes the general (correct) assumption that the longer you live, the more loot you accumulate, the better base you have. You simply can not make a steel base on day 1. You're putting out a hypothetical that's not possible within the confines of the game (unless you play with 1 year long days, which is not a default setting).  No game will adapt well to players who cheat in a thousand steel blocks on day 1 and q6 weapons.

My proposal would be a system what always sees your power level and adjusts the situation to it.

The key factors of if a player will survive are the following:

1. Armor and health
   
2. Weapons and their Ammo
   
3. Where the player is
   

1+2 it already does. It however generalised to "days alive" which is more generic. On day 1 you have certain weapon/armor power level. On day 10 you have another.  It's not an exact science, as then you'd have to start diving into a lot of factors. Hit accuracy? Did the player perk in the weapon? Do they "have" a weapon but don't use it? It gets messy fast. If I put a q6 m60 in a chest, and another  chest has the ammo, but I never use it for a blood moon horde, how is that counted? What if the zombies spawn in and I then pick it up? What if it has 50 durability left and I have no repair kits? What if I have repair kits? What if I can craft a repair kit and then repair? Maybe I don't have skills in the m60 but in pistol, but only have a q1 pistol? If you think the game has poor performance now, imagine the game having to track a thousand variables (and items) and trying to anticipate how the player will utilize them versus a threat.

3 is slowly getting there. Wasteland is more difficult. Forest is easier. Night time is harder, daytime easier. Tier 5 poi's are harder than tier 1, which is location specific.

Now the dynamic gamestage scaling would take all these information and formulate enemies that are fitting the challange for the player with simple rules:

1. The more health and armor a player has the more damage the undead does.
   
2. The game checks for melee weapons and ranged weapons owned by the player and sets enemy hp to a matching level so the zeds are neither easy to kill nor impossible
   
3. Block damage is dependant on where the player is, if your house is mainly wood the zeds deal low damage, if its steel they deal more but its balanced around the idea that certain blocks are weak and others are strong so they never turn into home wreckers.
   
4. The game utilizes fodder, regular and elite zombies in random patterns so each enemy feels different.
   

1) If you directly scale damage to player health and armor, you basically might as well remove armor altogether, because the more perfect this system becomes, the more it is the equivalence of having no armor.

2) Again, we might as well have 1 melee and 1 ranged weapon, because perfect scaling of enemies mean everything feels exactly the same.

3) So a steel house I put my bedroll should be wrecked, but a steel house someone else built that I happen to stay in should last longer? Or for that matter a steel POI? Accomplishing high damage for certain material and low for others, is functionally equivalent to having different blocks with different block strengths (which we do now). Wood is weak, steel is tough.  If zombies deal 3x damage to steel, we'd then need to triple steel HP and .. they would cancel each other out. So why add the complexity?

Now what I would like to see instead, is certain zombies being better against certain materials. Ie, wood/flagstone being easier, and certain zombies like demo, construction, wight, doing higher damage to concrete and steel.

4) The game does this already. Each gamestage has a mix of fodder, regular and elite units and it's randomized. It's just as the gamestage goes up, there are higher proportions of higher tier zombies, as otherwise there would be no challenge increase.

To me, while the gamestage system isn't perfect, and I do think locations (ie, biome, time of day, blood moon horde etc) should impact more, most of what you highlight is already included but in a more general sense which actually can be tracked. I think there's a huge danger in games which try to over calculate things, and equalize to make enemies the exact same challenge for all levels, because you might as well do away with levels entirely as a system like that makes everything play exactly the same way whether level 1 with a bow and club as a level 300 with a m60 and a chainsaw.

But ideas are always good to throw out there, I commend you for that!

/Ved