John Black
New member
Exactly, after a certain point the only challenge is not to trigger too many demos.
PC Horde Night feedback - less smart zombies
- Thread starter John Black
- Start date
AtomicUs5000
New member
True. Starting fresh, I'm already thinking ahead about how I'm going to deal with demos this time.
I always wished that there were things you could do to mitigate demo damage using select materials. For example, putting a layer of dirt/sand in between two walls. Or maybe make it so that wood is weak normally but better against explosive damage. Taking it a step further, if zombies had strengths and weaknesses with specific materials and if materials were less about linear HP and SI progression and more about utilizing their properties to handle different situations, we would have much more interesting builds and BM gameplay. Have rad zombies do area damage around them, but then change scrap iron walls to just scrap walls which require lead and iron and can block this radiation. Even let water squelch fire zombies to weaken the damage they can do, destroying the water block in the process.
A side effect of this is that now in between hordes you might have several different tasks to do to keep your base maintained including those things that were early stage stuff normally like digging, scrapping, and cutting wood. Lead becomes actually useful and now you actually have to get pails of water. Less of the same old grind and more thinking and planning.
John Black
New member
Totally next level ideas there @AtomicUs5000. That’s also exactly the type of scalability I mentioned in my first post the game lacks.
So just imagine you start out with 3 block thick walls. As you progress in gamestage and the enemy gets stronger you can add your special layers on the outside or maybe just build another wall to deal with the new threat.
Funneling zombies just kills the ‘bigger base’, ‘bigger castle’, ‘thicker walls’ idea. And with ‘bigger’ comes the need for alarms, more traps and defenses to cover walls under attack that you may or may not be aware of.
My last online game was on a hard-mode server, BM zombie block damage at 250% and multiple of us with 600+ GS. We could deal with the threat in a what I would guess was a 30x30 base with almost no repairs necessary during BM.
So just imagine you start out with 3 block thick walls. As you progress in gamestage and the enemy gets stronger you can add your special layers on the outside or maybe just build another wall to deal with the new threat.
Funneling zombies just kills the ‘bigger base’, ‘bigger castle’, ‘thicker walls’ idea. And with ‘bigger’ comes the need for alarms, more traps and defenses to cover walls under attack that you may or may not be aware of.
My last online game was on a hard-mode server, BM zombie block damage at 250% and multiple of us with 600+ GS. We could deal with the threat in a what I would guess was a 30x30 base with almost no repairs necessary during BM.
KhaineGB
Well-known member
AtomicUs5000
New member
I had this in mind from many years ago playing Minecraft Factions. Countless hours were spent thinking of ways to prevent your base from getting raided by rival factions.
You had your super strong obsidian which was great for explosive damage and took awhile to get through with a pickaxe. But then, the next layer might be horizontal layers of sand/gravel and obsidian so that people would have to switch back and forth between shovel and pickaxe. Third layer might be a checkboard of water and wood. Wood because now you need an axe to get through easily and the water to prevent trying to burn the layer. Finally you alternate these layers as much as you think is needed depending on the strength of your enemy factions. So, even as the supreme faction, it was important to still keep your stock of "weaker" material.
hotpoon
New member
I also use that mod. It's great, except, I would like it more if you could adjust the number of roaming zombies to be a lot higher around towns and cities and sparse in wilderness. That was how it was in A15 when they had the hub cities. Made it very, very exciting going to loot in the city.We use JaxTeller718’s x4 'Increased Wilderness Zombies', it's an amazing change and I would recommend it to anyone feeling that the apocalypse is empty. Just don't get stuck in the wasteland without ammo at night. We had to go back to MaxSpawnedZombies=64 after the 2nd night in the wasteland but even after reverting things are still action packed all over the map(only 3 of us on the server).
Maharin
Well-known member
That was how it was in A15 when they had the hub cities. Made it very, very exciting going to loot in the city.
That is one of the things I most wish they would bring back. A city somewhere on the map with a LOT more zombies than normal. It could even be a smaller city to make it lag less, if needed, so long as the extreme danger returns to that area.
ijese
New member
I must admit I had 1000s of hours in this game before the AI got changed. Horde night used to be great when you got surprised by a couple of zombies that had 'got in round the back'.
Now they just tend to line up and wait to be smacked on the head, I rarely play anymore.
I miss the random AI so much. I also miss the zombies ability to smell. Night time is now way too easy. I used to spent the first few nights in a dark corner hidden (with my meat stashed away) terrified. Now I just treat the nights the same as days.
Now they just tend to line up and wait to be smacked on the head, I rarely play anymore.
I miss the random AI so much. I also miss the zombies ability to smell. Night time is now way too easy. I used to spent the first few nights in a dark corner hidden (with my meat stashed away) terrified. Now I just treat the nights the same as days.
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Roland
Community Moderator
You can control this to a degree with how you build your base. If you build a base that specifically exploits them into lining up and waiting to be smacked then that is what you will get. But build a basic bunker style and you will get more of the random surrounding behavior that you remember. There is a current meta with designing a base that creates a killing corridor that they will mostly follow and predictably killing them all-- but you don't have to follow that meta. Make a simple tower surrounded by spikes like in the old days and you may get some surprises. Make an exploitive base that you saw someone build on YouTube that grinds up all the zombies in predictable ways and you will kill them all efficiently and boringly. Its true that they will tend to go to the weakest point but there is also a lot of randomness in their behavior now.
BFT2020
Well-known member
Wait until Feral Sense comes in Alpha 20. Based on Roland's feedback, nights will become more interesting if you set that to On.
Kyonshi
New member
This isnt really a problem from the game, its just that you now know how it works and you exploit the game design at your advantage. Its just a normal process and assurance that we acquire over time, in any game of the genre.
They still come from all sides, it just depends on the type of base you have. Case in point, you can watch the Lockdown series from Glock9. He made his horde base in the vanilla prison and although he has an open entry point on the front, the Zs came from various sides and angles and he had to adapt.
I also was afraid of going out at night during my early 7DTD sessions and i couldnt deal with Zs coming from all sides because my horde base setup was deficient. Nowadays, just like you, im comfortable whatever the situation is and my adaptation capacity is much sharper than before. But Darkness Falls can flip that up quite intensily, trust me on that. Its almost like you have to learn how to play, all over again.
John Black
New member
I do believe the zombies started exploiting first!
But to be serious, I would much rather prefer switching off an unwanted behavior than trying to balance walls/doors to get a true random result that will only last until the first chink.
This 'unwanted' behavior stems from - "1) Zombies will try to path X blocks to player probably adjusted based on HP of blocks in between."
... with X being too high removing a lot of the randomness when a base is being attacked.
But to be serious, I would much rather prefer switching off an unwanted behavior than trying to balance walls/doors to get a true random result that will only last until the first chink.
This 'unwanted' behavior stems from - "1) Zombies will try to path X blocks to player probably adjusted based on HP of blocks in between."
... with X being too high removing a lot of the randomness when a base is being attacked.
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Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
Something I like to do in my SP game is use my horde nights as a barometer. Once my horde nights start getting too easy (e.g. horde ends before 4am), I start turning up the difficulty.
My favorite setting to turn up is the max alive zombies during blood moon. In my last longplay, my max alive zombie setting reached 16 (default is 8 ) by night 63. I'm sure this is easy mode for some people but it was perfect for me lol.
Gamida
Hood Ornament
From what I have seen on line I think New World already has that as a feature...AKA - How to use your PC to cook your food and boil the water for your coffee
KhaineGB
Well-known member
Gamida
Hood Ornament
kidmo31
New member
The issue is 100% minimum system requirements. If you actually look at the XML for feral hordes you would actually find they do what you want them to. The issue is players have found ways to break the AI and simplify horde nights. It used to be you build a cube on the ground and you were ok because they were dumb and would beat the whole base equally. Then they added weakness detection to the AI . Now to beat it you just elevate and do a catwalk cube and once again your fine. The playerbase will always find a way to break AI because the more you have to add to the AI the less zombies you can actually have spawned because every "Smart" Zombie drains resources as the CPU has to calculate every possible path. Even a basic AI will cause the same drain on a system. So because of player free will while building there will always be a way to break the AI simply because of the limitations of Unity and the Minimum Spec.
What you call breaking the AI is in reality just playing one of the genres in 7D2D. This is typical tower defense. Typical in tower defense games is to find weakesses of your enemies and use the terrain to your advantage. Same here.