PC GameStage and when to meet the ferals

My ideal is being able to mop the floor with single rad Zs when i'm fully combat specced, therefore expecting full groups to give a challenge. The middle ground would be just a bit of challenge when mid-specced for combat for single rad Zs (not a big one though)
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But that is where the game is right now. If you are not full combat/survival specced, do not blunder into every POI you see. If you are combat specced, get in there and pwn. It's that simple.

If I came here as a full combat specced char complaining about how long it takes to craft anything, I'd be laughed at.

Simple tips: if a POI is huge, it's death. Avoid if not combat specced. If a POI has a "pre-determined" fancy way in, with a lamp shining on it (such as scaffolding at the back of the house or a hole in the garden), it's death. Avoid if not combat specced. If a POI has an A16-style regular front door with no defences beyond a bit of corrugated iron nailed on it, it's safe. Enter regardless of spec.

 
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We kind of have the hybrid now. Well, not kind of, we do. And it sucks.
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Yes. I don't think various different sleeper groups in each POI make much actual difference in the end. GS makes all the difference. Their random ranges are also not very random. Would prefer if POIs themselves (exploration) gated content (loot, recipes etc) by having greatly diverse difficulty levels (with large random ranges), with their biomes changing their special spawns like it happens now (with more discernible spawn rates though) and lootlists following the same principle. I hate speaking about removing scaling though because so many things already depend on it...

 
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Well the bottom line that even if done correctly (i.e. the curve is balanced), then the game plays the same no matter what level you are.

Level 1 with a wooden club takes 4 or 5 whacks to kill a GS 1 zombie.

Level 100 with a modded club and perks takes 4 or 5 whacks to kill a GS 100 zombie.

...where's the difference? What's the point in progression at all, if the net effect is exactly the same? Oh lookie, my club is on fire now. Big whoop. *Yawn*.

I think that's the crux of the issue with this system. There is ZERO point in leveling up, because gamestages level with you. And it's been like this for a while, but for a17, the curve is broken.

Someone said earlier don't go into a poi. I don't have to, there are enough poi's with sleepers outside that glow.

 
Well the bottom line that even if done correctly (i.e. the curve is balanced), then the game plays the same no matter what level you are.
Level 1 with a wooden club takes 4 or 5 whacks to kill a GS 1 zombie.

Level 100 with a modded club and perks takes 4 or 5 whacks to kill a GS 100 zombie.

...where's the difference? What's the point in progression at all, if the net effect is exactly the same? Oh lookie, my club is on fire now. Big whoop. *Yawn*.

I think that's the crux of the issue with this system. There is ZERO point in leveling up, because gamestages level with you. And it's been like this for a while, but for a17, the curve is broken.

Someone said earlier don't go into a poi. I don't have to, there are enough poi's with sleepers outside that glow.
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That is definitely the crux of the issue - it is for any game with rigid level scaling. That's why I at least wanted global time to factor in the GS formula, along with level and daysalive. Global time taking some weight off them, would at least make progression a bit more impactful (with a cap like daysalive has that would prevent actually "becoming weaker"). But it's not like that is a real or a very good solution.

GS scaling not only undermines the sense of the player's progression, but makes exploration more bland because areas are more or less homogenized when it comes to difficulty and subsequently (and most importantly) looting can't exactly be gated with exploration.

To avoid any misunderstandings, when I said above that GS makes all the difference, I didn't mean that it creates a diverse experience between levels of progression or areas (it does exactly the opposite as you said), I meant that any diversification that biome/POI-specific entity groups try to create, is barely noticable in-game because the impact that GS has is overwhelming.

 
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Well the bottom line that even if done correctly (i.e. the curve is balanced), then the game plays the same no matter what level you are.
Level 1 with a wooden club takes 4 or 5 whacks to kill a GS 1 zombie.

Level 100 with a modded club and perks takes 4 or 5 whacks to kill a GS 100 zombie.

...where's the difference? What's the point in progression at all, if the net effect is exactly the same? Oh lookie, my club is on fire now. Big whoop. *Yawn*..
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Not true at all. If you're combat-specced at level 100 you will one-shot grunts and two-shot most everything else. And heads explode a lot too.

 
Oh I agree, but want to put it out there that if GS is nerfed in anyway, or the occurrence of Irradiated is reduced or otherwise nerfed, this will ruin the game for combat-specced folk who are already lacking challenge as it is.
But let's take your statement a little further. People mainly complain about encountering Irradiated too early in POIs. That is the main issue as far as I can see. I say that this is OK for combat-specced chars, and I say this from experience playing on Insane. You, quite rightly, state that the game should be viable even for those who are not combat-specced. OK here's the obvious answer....

Non-combat chars are perfectly viable, but they need to use a different play style. They need to NOT be diving into POIs they know are full of dangerous enemies. You can tell a mile away those POIs that are full-on dungeons and those that are just boxes. If you are not combat-specced, stick to the latter. Common sense? You said yourself there needs to be more than one way to play the game. There is!!

If you are not prepared or able to go full combat-spec then AVOID full combat situations. At the very least do not come here complaining about too many Irradiated too soon when the fact of the matter is that you are not specced to deal with that. That's a ludicrous complaint. What did you expect to happen??

[not addressing you personally Cirion]
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Understand you didn't address me directly, but I just want to point out again that while you can avoid zombies (for the most part) you still have to get level ups, in order to get the level-gated skills (and other important perks).

This is why IMO learn by doing needs to come back at least to some extent. When you're forced to level up by level-gating and whatnot, it doesn't matter, the end result is the same... increasing gamestage whether you're combat specc or not. And the non-combat specc is screwed, especially on higher difficulties.

 
Understand you didn't address me directly, but I just want to point out again that while you can avoid zombies (for the most part) you still have to get level ups, in order to get the level-gated skills (and other important perks).
This is why IMO learn by doing needs to come back at least to some extent. When you're forced to level up by level-gating and whatnot, it doesn't matter, the end result is the same... increasing gamestage whether you're combat specc or not. And the non-combat specc is screwed, especially on higher difficulties.
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yup. that's why i literally stopped going into any POIs at all for about 30 levels, and instead just wandered the wild, collecting bird nests (xp for looting containers scales with your level, so much so that currently at level 130+ for me I almost get the same XP killing a zombie that I do hitting a bird nest) , killing stray wilderness zombies, and then at night crafting stuff and mining, and then selling crafted stuff to trader next day for xp. but sounds like theyre nerfing traders hard in 17.2, so the progression will become even more slow and tedious. i shouldn't be punished for wanting to explore the POI. all they have to do is revert the GS back to what it was in a16. they were solving a problem that was never broken in the first place. they can keep the tier V POIs crawling with greens, but having greens just sleeping outside random crappy small POI buildings is completely asinine.

 
One might think the debacle of Oblivion would have taught the pit falls of scaling up every enemy with the player.

How does that saying go: History is doomed to repeat itself

 
Now maybe people can see why I dislike the new perk system? In A16 if you were clever you could get mining skill ups etc and still have lower player level and thus lower GS... as example
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How? Mining gave you general XP at somewhat the same speed than killing zombies in A16. There is no difference I see there.

 
The problem i think is the fact that at some point with normal skillpoint distribution you will have to stop exploring and focus on levelling to get better fighting skills, because otherwise you'll get wrecked.

In A16 i almost constantly explored POIs. Now i have to at one point stop, focusing to grind levels in other ways than exploration and killing Zs (random zombies are in low numbers). No matter the difficulty, because even on lower ones, you hit the gap where you are forced to grind.

Having a choice to pick a specific character development for easier or harder gameplay is different than being forced to do something in order for the game to be "pleasent" again after the difficulty spikes.

 
i had missed a madmole post where he said there was a bug causing greens to show up too soon. hallelujah. i'm going to eagerly await the official 17.2 release. i think with a few tweaks to my build order, i can have a much more optimal playthrough this time.

 
Understand you didn't address me directly, but I just want to point out again that while you can avoid zombies (for the most part) you still have to get level ups, in order to get the level-gated skills (and other important perks).
This is why IMO learn by doing needs to come back at least to some extent. .
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In this we are in complete agreement.

 
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