PC Game feels like its punishing me for levelling up

[Ghostlight]

Lower the difficulty?

When I did my recent solo run I lowered it to Default because I knew it was going to be tough putting all my points into Int. And POIs were fine.

 

[RipClaw]

OK, where we are now, our GS is almost identical. Mine is 2 higher than my friend's. I have died 4 times total on this run and he has died 32 times. Can you explain that?

The formula is:

gameStage = ( playerLevel + daysSurvived ) * gameDifficultyMultiplier

where daysSurvived as the days you played are minus 2x the deaths.

Because on the server the difficulty is given globally only the levels and the played days are left as variables. Either your friend has a higher level than you or he has played more days than you. The day that is displayed on screen doesn't play a role here in contrast to the single player because the server continues to run regardless of how many players are logged in.

If I check the gamestage in my single player game, it is exactly what I calculate with this formula.

 

[Jackelmyer]

The formula is:
gameStage = ( playerLevel + daysSurvived ) * gameDifficultyMultiplier

where daysSurvived as the days you played are minus 2x the deaths.

Because on the server the difficulty is given globally only the levels and the played days are left as variables. Either your friend has a higher level than you or he has played more days than you. The day that is displayed on screen doesn't play a role here in contrast to the single player because the server continues to run regardless of how many players are logged in.

If I check the gamestage in my single player game, it is exactly what I calculate with this formula.

I was poking around the Gamestage xml file and we're getting ferals, at least, at gamestage 52.

So basically, day 14 and near level 40, you're fighting occasional ferals. Possibly sooner.

Gamestages are kinda whack imo. That and some POIs seem to just have almost stageless spawns. Which would be cool if it was more than just spikes dropping that hint. Spikes are all over the place. And not all buildings wrapped in spikes are simple buildings either. Not all buildings wrapped in spikes are excessively challenging.

Hopefully gamestage will get tweaked or, even better, though I know it's a notable amount of extra disk space, a game stage configuration that is specific to difficulty settings.

So default or easy modes, ferals appear much later.

In insane mode, you start off against ferals. And they're kind of the norm. But this one set of gamestage files really doesn't work well with just a single scaling difficulty.

Though I suppose, rather than how game stage works today, they could set a base game stage for anything above easy that is added to the gamestage overall.

Easy Base GS = 0

Nomad Base GS = 25

And so on.

So it ends up calced like:

gameStage = (( playerLevel + daysSurvived ) * gameDifficultyMultiplier) + BaseGS

Still needs the Gamestage tweaked for even that. But something should be done about gamestages.

 

[RipClaw]

I was poking around the Gamestage xml file and we're getting ferals, at least, at gamestage 52.
So basically, day 14 and near level 40, you're fighting occasional ferals. Possibly sooner.

If you play on a server the gamestage is a little bit different. On a server a group gamestage is calculated from the 5 players with the highest gamestage in a group.

That's why you get feral and radioactive zombies sooner than on single player.

 

[Kage848]

What day was it? I’m wondering how quickly you are leveling up. If you level faster than it takes you to collect good gear then you could get in trouble.

On top of this how is his gs that high at that level? I'm over 80 on my world and my gs is only 160. Havemt died yet. What other factors effect gs?

 

[RipClaw]

On top of this how is his gs that high at that level? I'm over 80 on my world and my gs is only 160. Havemt died yet. What other factors effect gs?

The formula has changed since A16 according to gamestages.xml. The numbers are not as high as what you were used to.

I once gave myself level 300 in a test game and jumped directly to day 350. As a difficulty I left the standard (Nomad) set. The gamestage was then at 975. According to the old formula the gamestage would have been 10860 in A16.

 

[Ghostlight]

The formula is:
gameStage = ( playerLevel + daysSurvived ) * gameDifficultyMultiplier

where daysSurvived as the days you played are minus 2x the deaths.

Because on the server the difficulty is given globally only the levels and the played days are left as variables. Either your friend has a higher level than you or he has played more days than you. The day that is displayed on screen doesn't play a role here in contrast to the single player because the server continues to run regardless of how many players are logged in.

I host the server locally. We only play together. I close it down after he logs when we are done. Our levels are comparable (I'm about 10 levels higher at level 150 I think). Our day count is identical. It makes no sense.

Edit: Did a bit more number crunching. My GS is bang on according to your formula. It is my friend's that is WAY higher than it should be. He is 11 levels lower, has 32 deaths compared to my 4, and I assume our days alive is the same as we only play together and the server is closed when we are not playing. However his GS is only 4 less than mine.

On top of this how is his gs that high at that level? I'm over 80 on my world and my gs is only 160. Havemt died yet. What other factors effect gs?

The difficulty level you have chosen applies a multiplier.

scavenger: 1.0

adventurer: 1.2

nomad: 1.5

warrior: 1.7

survivalist: 2.0

insane: 2.5

 

[fishjie]

Lower the difficulty?
When I did my recent solo run I lowered it to Default because I knew it was going to be tough putting all my points into Int. And POIs were fine.

Good for you. I like to build and dig deep. Stone tools are garbage for that and break all the damn time. Needed to get INT so i could get forge and get iron tools. by the time i got iron tools i was already seeing greens. dumb dumb dumb, a16 difficulty was fine. greens didn't really start showing up in en masse until i had steel tools and armor. by catering to the minority who complains that the game is too ez (i'm guessing that would be you) it alienates pretty much everyone else. you can crank up to the hardest difficulty, leave the rest of us alone

note i've pretty much adapted to the idiotic greens by avoiding POIs and levelling up via mining and collecting bird nests and getting stuff from traders - so the game is not any more challenging and no need to lower the difficulty, its just forcing me to avoid questing and POIs which presumably the developers worked hard on. LOL

 

[apostrophe]

I'm entirely alienated in this conversation. I'm level 50 something and just now I saw my first radiated zombie (a spider one). I'm playing alone, standard difficulty. But I've also started seeing feral ones - they are the ones that run even in daytime right? - and THOSE deserve some attention.

carry on peoples.

 

[Cirion]

rad's also run during they day - they count as ferals in that sense.

 

[Royal Deluxe]

I'm entirely alienated in this conversation. I'm level 50 something and just now I saw my first radiated zombie (a spider one). I'm playing alone, standard difficulty. But I've also started seeing feral ones - they are the ones that run even in daytime right? - and THOSE deserve some attention.
carry on peoples.

Level 50, you know that you need not to start from scratch every day ? :strawberry:

 

[Cirion]

Another idea that came to mind, and this would perfectly balance zombie killing perk builds (IMO) is this... simple...

Kill zombies = increase gamestage. That's it, No multiplier based upon player level at all. Get rid of it.

Shouldn't it make logical sense that zombies should get harder when you have an easy time killing them? Anyone else agree?

There, just by this one change, you've now turned the tables on INT builds vs. STR/Perception builds. Because now, if you just ignore zombies and mine/build, you have a low gamestage. You're still weak against zombies, but you won't face hard zombies, so its fine. You wanna be able to kill zombies? Well, it's a double edged sword because once you start killing zombies, they start getting harder too.

Queue the people who will now complain that "gamestage increases too much by killing zombies and STR/perception builds are now useless" LOL

 

[RipClaw]

note i've pretty much adapted to the idiotic greens by avoiding POIs and levelling up via mining and collecting bird nests and getting stuff from traders - so the game is not any more challenging and no need to lower the difficulty, its just forcing me to avoid questing and POIs which presumably the developers worked hard on. LOL

Don't worry later the POIs won't be a problem for you anymore. I also had my doubts whether I could still go in POIs after I met the first radioactive zombie and it killed me immediately and then again when I wanted to get my backpack.

At the latest when you have a steel armor with the appropriate mods and Pain Tolerance at 5 you are a walking tank. As long as you don't let the zombies push you into a corner they can't hurt you much anymore. Of course it also helps to invest in Heavy Amor and Healing Factor if you have points left. Then you regenerate very fast and the armor protects you even better.

I am now level 120 and equipped with a military armor with additional mods. But my chest armor is still a leather armor because I haven't found a bulletproof vest yet that could take all mods from the leather chest armor. What helps me the most in critical situations is my shotgun with a Rad Remover Mod. This is the best mod you can have as it disables the regeneration of the radioactive zombies for about 90 seconds.

I can now do level 4 trader quests without major problems. However, I have got used to some things that are helpful.

Before I go into the building then I open all exits and windows from the outside so that I always have an escape route open. As I open the doors and windows, many zombies come out of the building so I can fight them outside which is much easier than in a confined space.

When I enter the building I work room by room. Every time I enter a new room, I wait a moment to see if zombies come running and then walk back the way I came and pull them out of the building.

I don't loot anything until I'm sure I killed all the zombies in the building. So I am not in danger of being overloaded.

And I rarely go the way the developers give me with the lights. Often these dungeons are designed to trigger the zombies when you reach a certain point. With that I circumvent the problem.

For example, in Navezgane there is a mansion on top of a mountain. Below it is a laboratory with some strong zombies. If you open the door to the laboratory, the zombies all wake up at once. But if you use the exit as an entrance and sneak up on the zombies from behind, they won't wake up all at the same time and you can deal with the zombies individually.

You can also make many levels by selling things you made yourself to the trader. Parts of an iron armor or tools are available here.

 

[Royal Deluxe]

Shouldn't it make logical sense that zombies should get harder when you have an easy time killing them? Anyone else agree?

This whole leveling of enemys is the most stupid development in game history.

The player should start with 50% of all perks/abilitys and be able to reach 80% of all abilitys, balanced a way that he can dominate from day 1 on with decent equip. The zombies should not level at all. But in such a gameplay there should be pois that have exclusive loot and stronger enemys.

Am i the only one who pacepalm at every game the player becomes stronger and the enemys too ?

Where is there the sense except wasting a lot of development time ?

But i take it as it is. I guess no developer would do this if not enough people would want it. I cant understand twitter and co too.

 

[Cirion]

This whole leveling of enemys is the most stupid development in game history.
The player should start with 50% of all perks/abilitys and be able to reach 80% of all abilitys, balanced a way that he can dominate from day 1 on with decent equip. The zombies should not level at all. But in such a gameplay there should be pois that have exclusive loot and stronger enemys.

Am i the only one who pacepalm at every game the player becomes stronger and the enemys too ?

Where is there the sense except wasting a lot of development time ?

But i take it as it is. I guess no developer would do this if not enough people would want it. I cant understand twitter and co too.

I actually tend to mostly agree with you. I'm just saying, I came up with the idea I did, in order to salvage the gamestage system as it is, to make it less painful.

 

[Jedo]

This whole leveling of enemys is the most stupid development in game history. <snip>

What I liked about Borderlands 2 was their enemy scaling. It moved in plateaus. At times, you would get your ass kicked, so you had to be more strategic. Eventually, though, you got to a point (whether through gear or abilities) when you were godlike even as you progressed to "harder" levels. At some point, though, the balance shifted back to where you had to be careful again. That game is still one of my favorite games to play with a team.

 

[Khulkhuum]

I do agree that there are so many voices spreading word that it is getting too tough for them at some point. @Cirion posted a neat idea how to improve things, but let me share a short story with you all.

Once upon a time i discovered a fun game called Gundemonium. Beautiful anime graphics placed into a bullet hell shooter. I played the game when i had a pretty bad PC, which meant that it ran in low FPS (ideal for such games). Thus i used the mechanic of friction quite often - making bullets fly very close to the heart (which when hit you lose HP) would increase the multiplier of the score. I was pretty fond of completing the game at the time this way, especially as increasing the multiplier increased the difficulty quite a lot.

After a few years i played the game again, this time in standard >=30 FPS and tried using friction as much as i could to get the best score again. Even with added experience of many other games i played during that past few years, i was constantly being destroyed even at the first levels. Only after quite a few hours i decided to not use the friction so much and i was able to beat a couple levels more - in lower difficulty it had because of this.

So in summary - we sometimes aim for something that we think we can easily achieve, especially as the beginning more often than not is pretty chill. Depending on our gaming skills and proper management of skill points (if present in a game) sometimes we easily fit into the game and don't have many problems, but sometimes we end up with a wall that blocks us from achieving further progress. In such a situation, it's always good to look at the whole picture and verify what is going wrong and if there are any ways to improve it.

Hell, we can start all over and try a new approach if that's too much. Cut your losses and go again.

 

[Cirion]

How hard would it be to mod the gamestage calculation to make it only increase with zombie kills? I might try that, so I can see how it plays out.

 

[RestInPieces]

This whole leveling of enemys is the most stupid development in game history.
The player should start with 50% of all perks/abilitys and be able to reach 80% of all abilitys, balanced a way that he can dominate from day 1 on with decent equip. The zombies should not level at all. But in such a gameplay there should be pois that have exclusive loot and stronger enemys.

Am i the only one who pacepalm at every game the player becomes stronger and the enemys too ?

Where is there the sense except wasting a lot of development time ?

But i take it as it is. I guess no developer would do this if not enough people would want it. I cant understand twitter and co too.

No, you are not the only one. Level scaling is just a lazy, crude way to control the game's difficulty and gameplay experience of the player. Contrary to popular, unimaginative belief, it is NOT the only way to present challege to the player at late levels. My main gripe with level scaling, is that progression and enemies feel artificial and the virtual world less believable.

Bethesda games use it a lot. In TES for example, Morrowind had the "right" kind of scaling, as immersion-friendly as possible, Oblivion had the laziest and most artificial, Skyrim had a mix of both. Thanks to the modding community the latter games were "fixed".

 

[Randomdude]

No, you are not the only one. Level scaling is just a lazy, crude way to control the game's difficulty and gameplay experience of the player. Contrary to popular, unimaginative belief, it is NOT the only way to present challege to the player at late levels. My main gripe with level scaling, is that progression and enemies feel artificial and the virtual world less believable.

I agree with both of you. Level scaling is a lazy way to artificially make the world "harder".