PC Game balance and progression

[HungryZombie]

I really love playing with a shotgun while looting houses at Nomad difficulty, it doesn`t feel like a pellet gun. Damn single shot usually takes down radiated zombies at a point blank headshot at once. How not necessary refreshing but always amazing, and I did not even buff the weapon.
Some people suggested removing most of stamina dependance thing in majority or entirely. I would love to see this gone at some point because its another grinding/stopping power/frustration inducing factor that has to be taken into consideration well. Slower movement with diffrent armour as well as animation sets of weapon swings etc. is just enough to balance the things out. I`m talking mostly about combat.

Running and the use of god damn axe might stay for me as it is for now. Zombies could rage more often if the stamina wouldn`t be a stopping factor then some new, actually interesting mechanics could be implemented in place. I believe limitted stamina has ended around 2006/2007 with (gosh, gonna get hate because of it) Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Money talks ladies and gentelmens.

Skryim was released 2011 and it has a limited stamina mechanic.

Witcher 3 was released 2015 and it has stamina as well.

 

[chinagreenelvis]

It sticks together.
As Ghostlight posted formula:

gamestage = (your level + days alive) x difficulty multiplier

If you play on 120 minute days the "days alive" increases slower in real time then on 10 minute days.

So lets say you start and play for 2 hours and gain 5 level ups in that time. After the 2 hours your gamestage will be:

120 minute days: (5 + 1) * 1.2 = 7

10 minte days: (5 + 12) * 1.2 = 20

So what I said before is correct: expanding the day cycle length makes zombies easier to kill for longer.

I feel like this is just fundamentally wrong, and there should at least be some kind of option to attach the difficulty increase to time survived (or hell, even time played) rather than days survived.

I mean, just because I die doesn't mean I suddenly want zombie difficulty to stop progressing. So what does survival have to do with it? And just because I want days to last longer doesn't mean I want zombies to advance slower.

 

[RipClaw]

So what I said before is correct: expanding the day cycle length makes zombies easier to kill for longer.
I feel like this is just fundamentally wrong, and there should at least be some kind of option to attach the difficulty increase to time survived (or hell, even time played) rather than days survived.

I mean, just because I die doesn't mean I suddenly want zombie difficulty to stop progressing. So what does survival have to do with it? And just because I want days to last longer doesn't mean I want zombies to advance slower.

You can adjust this in your game by adjusting e.g. the multiplier for the gamestage in the gamestages.xml file. You can also set daysAliveChangeWhenKilled to 0 so that death does not affect the gamestage.

If you want to change the progress of the game you can generate the gamestages.xml and the entitygroups.xml here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P58Ewih074DzsA8OnROUT0CN6jcBnoX81bdiLOtnN2k/edit#gid=1725375289

 

[chinagreenelvis]

You can adjust this in your game by adjusting e.g. the multiplier for the gamestage in the gamestages.xml file. You can also set daysAliveChangeWhenKilled to 0 so that death does not affect the gamestage.
If you want to change the progress of the game you can generate the gamestages.xml and the entitygroups.xml here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P58Ewih074DzsA8OnROUT0CN6jcBnoX81bdiLOtnN2k/edit#gid=1725375289

Ah, cool. I'll fiddle with this, thanks!

 

[Boidster]

You can also set daysAliveChangeWhenKilled to 0 so that death does not affect the gamestage.

I need to do this. I almost never die to a zombie; it's always my own stupidity, which will persist regardless of how low my GS is. (._.)

 

[Tehnomaag]

I think I know what the problem is: if it takes game days survived into account (rather than IRL time survived), expanding game day cycles to 120 minutes will make the difficulty progression slower.
I don't like day cycles moving too fast, so I make them twice as long, and this apparently makes my gamestage low even though my XP is at 300%, so I'm progressing faster than the game difficulty is catching up with me. (Not much fun.)

I guess my suggestion at this point would be to make the gamestage dependent upon time survived (equivalent to default day cycles, I.E. IRL hours) rather than in-game days.

You could set difficulty 3 (default is 2). Zombies do then 150% damage and player will do about 75% (difficulty 2 was 100% and 100%). Then even a cheerleader can be a challenge if it enrages and lunges after you if all you have is a stone spear and hemp pants.