PC 'Game Stage' scaling needs overhaul. + My ideas

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xXMagnusXx

Refugee
I don't think I'm the only one who thinks this, but the zombie scaling in this game is currently broken.

At lower levels, the game is too easy. Pistols and ammo are VERY easy to find, and even then, a club is all you really need to survive. The only things that spawn are walkers, even in "boss" areas in my experience. One could, in theory, reach the top of dishong tower before the end of day 1 and only need a small stack of wood to do so.

Around midway into the game, I'd say... Level 40-50, the difficulty spikes very sharply. I had been encountering ferals in POIs for some time, and I enjoyed it. It kept me on edge, but wasn't unreasonable. Then I began to see rad zombies spawning in ambush positions in close quarters environments. That, to me, is too much. (I was raiding small houses)

Then we get to the loot aspect of things. I've scavenged with different levels of the looting perk. It does get me better loot, but... It shouldn't (kinda. hear me out). I should get FAAARRRR better loot from the top of higashi pharmaceutical than I should from the attic of a random house in diersville. It seems the only difference in loot is the physical crates that are placed there. The contents are no different than a smaller, presumably easier location.

This means, at higher levels in the game, you could encounter resistance rivaling a night 7 horde inside of more valuable POIs, and get the same quality of loot that you got from a small camp or house. I enabled cheats just to do some testing at the Crack-a-book tower. I found at least a dozen (probably more) rad zombies, an entire 7 day horde of ferals, plus walkers to boot. And that was me just flying up the wall and smacking the window, so I only aggro'd a PORTION of the zeds. I got precisely the same quality loot that I got from the working stiffs tool shop. (only a fraction of the zombies)

The way things are currently balanced, the bullets and medical supplies spent to raid a high-profile POI at high levels will not be worth the loot inside. At higher levels, it seems to be more effective to stick entirely to mining and trading. One would think that should be the low level strat.

If you ask me, I think POIs should be divided into tier brackets. Loot quality should also be divided into such tiers, with game stage only effecting your placement in the bracket. The bracket itself is predetermined for each POI. Low level zombie/loot bracket in small POIs. High level zombie/loot bracket in large POIs. That way there will be an upper limit on the insanity of zombies in small houses. (no more 8+ rad zombies in small houses), and a sort of 'baseline' insanity for zombies in large POIs, with rads spawning even at level one; giving players a goal to work towards, and a reason to avoid certain areas in the early game. If loot quality worked the same way, the game would have a much more fulfilling sense of progression to it. If you want a rare, high tech item, you know you're not gonna find it in some random garage, you know you're gonna have to FIGHT for it in a big POI. If you just want some soup from a random pantry, you're not gonna have to kill 6 rads to get it.

Anyone else agree? Any thoughts?

Devs? What do you think?

 
As much as I love challenges, I do agree with what you said. I'd really love for POIs to be tierd, sometimes I find no difference in difficulty from normal - small houses and large POIs like the military bunker thing. The game stage goes from 0 to 100 in a flip, too. I haven't had all that much time to play recently, but my latest playthrough has been on survivalist and I went from normal zombies to (literally, I counted) 12 rad zombies (including 2 rad cops and 1 rad wight) all grouped up in an area in the hospital skyscraper. I've yet to see a normal cop or normal wight, or non-rad ferals lol!

I took care of them, which I suppose means I was ready for them, but I went through a ton of ammo in the process. I can replace it, but this was on day 29 too. Idk, I don't know what else they can throw at me at this point. I kinda would like the progress to spread out a bit more to feel more "gamestagey". SUch as normal zombies > normal zoms + some ferals > some normals most ferals some normal wights/cops > mostly ferals some rads > mostly rads some ferals

 
Agreed. At some point, long before level 100 (around 40-50 it would seem), I'll find not only tons of feral zombies in every POI, but also many irradiated zombies. It's far more than you can beat down with any melee weapon, even with perks that knock them down over and over. You'll run out of stamina before you can kill enough of them. If you switch to guns, you'll end up still burning through way more ammo than the POIs are worth.

Even using traps like barbed wire fencing and narrow passages to slow down the zombies so you can deal with them better only helps so much. I've had as many as at least 30-40 irradiated zombies suddenly come sprinting at me because I crawled over something by accident just a little, and when I touched the floor it made enough sound to wake everything up in the POI. I know the devs want stealth to be important, but stealth goes out the door pretty quick when you have to switch to your guns because you can't deal enough damage to an irradiated zombie fast enough using arrows or bolts, or melee within range.

Another problem is the actual melee combat. The zombies' movement, the hitscan "poke" of melee, and the ungodly stuttering mess the game becomes when a POI full of zombies wakes up makes melee extremely dangerous. If the game didn't want to fall apart the moment a bunch of zombies start trying to calculate a path to you, melee combat might not become suicide. However, when ♥♥♥♥ starts teleporting and jerking twice as much as the methhead zeds on coffee, you'd may as well throw your melee weapon and bow away and start blazing away full auto just to make sure you're hitting something.

 
I'd really love for POIs to be tierd, sometimes I find no difference in difficulty from normal - small houses and large POIs like the military bunker thing.
Click to expand...
POIs are tiered. The patch notes and developer diaries on the way up to the A17 experimental release often included notes like "Pass'n'Gas converted to a tier 5 POI".

 
POIs are tiered. The patch notes and developer diaries on the way up to the A17 experimental release often included notes like "Pass'n'Gas converted to a tier 5 POI".
Click to expand...
They are tiered in the way how big they are and how many zombies are in there but not in the way what kind of zombies are there and how strong they are. And the loot is not very different between a tier 1 building and a tier 5 building. You get more loot because the buildings are bigger but you don't get better loot.

 
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