Ideas for better biome progression and storms?

B

Barnebarn

Refugee
I'm not sure in which forum, this all fits in, but I will try here, as it seems the most obvious place.

I've now played the 2.0 stable version on Xbox as a sledge/shutgun guy to level 110+, progressed through all biomes by moving my small base from roof to roof, and have done all quests and high level POI's to a point, where they are now no longer challenging.

Instead of going into all the many changes of 2.0, here are just a quick overview before I go into the biome progression and storms:

Generally, I love the 2.0 version
New POI's and changes to POI's etc are awesome
New skills are awesome
General tab is kinda meh (I put 2 points in it in total during 110+ levels) and feels off vs. the other skills
New zombies are cool, but way to frequent in their biomes to a point, where they just get annoying
New zombie levels are very cool, as it forces you to priorities zombies when doing quests (kill blues first in quest, orange first on horde nights etc)
Random map generation is very good now. I love how alive the world feels now. Everywhere pretty much have something to check out and explore.
Several of the same traders feels so strange?

Okay, lets do biome progression:

I understand it, but I don't like it. It feels like pulling 2 game days out of my calender just border surfing until I have gotten the items needed to complete the quest and move into the new biome. It's just a waste of time and if I don't have to hunt mushrooms ever again, I'm all for it. And I dunno if mushrooms in burnt forest are just rare or just spawn in too late for me to see on Xbox, but I have to be pretty close to spot them, so took me forever. Mushrooms in wasteland I figured out are super easy to spot - just wait till night and they glow up.

I will not play another game with biome progression on, that's for sure.

But, instead of just saying it's all bad - here's my brainstorm for how to make biome progression a better more immersive thing:

Once you've done your 10 quests in forest biome, you get a quest to unlock the next trader in burnt forest. And not just find him - make it similar to the biome progression, but allow me to be in the biome, so I can actually move there and do my quest there.
The forest trader will not give you any level 2 quests until you unlock the next biome - so you can stay and do more level 1 quests - but if you want to progress, you need to unlock the next trader (which unlocks level 2 quests for all traders).
New trader is locked until you do his quest
Biome is "safe" to stay in, so people can move there, but instead of the current you slowly die after 3 min, give people some debuff that matches the biome:
Fx. Burnt forest will give you a debuff of 50% faster dehydration and you are 10% slower (movement, weapons etc) -
Fx. Desert will give you a debuff of 50% faster dehydration and armor debuff for every item higher than light armor (sweating or whatever) and 10% slower
Fx. Snow will give you a debuff of 50% more hunger and armor debuff for every non-heavy item worn (freezing or whatever) and 15% slower (due to snow)
Fx. Wasteland will give you a debuff of 50% more hunger and thirst and make you 25% slower

Doing the biome quest then unlocks the trader and removes the debuffs.


Okay, storms next.

Storms are literally just a stop playing mechanism. They are just a waste of time and forces me to wait in some room for 10+ min. Annoying if doing POI's as I have to just stand and wait - and more annoying when traveling through biomes and you drive into a new biome just to drive into a storm - so you have to drive out and wait just outside the biome peeking your head in from time to time to see when it's done.

I turned off storms after I completed my quests in the Wasteland - and I won't be turning storms on again in any new games.

But again - here are some brainstom ideas for storms, that I feel could actually make them worth it:

Instead of a "you slowly die" if you are in the stom how about:
Storms lower your visibility from a few to several meters with some fog of war kinda around you (black smoke in burnt, brown in desert, white snowstorm in snow, green toxic in wasteland etc)
Storms trigger new zombies that digs up from below ground (like worms in rain) - some new type of zombie would be cool
Storms trigger more roaming zombies spawning around you (not just besides you, but in your area)
Storms make zombies crazy (like now) - faster, deadlier - but more random - they don't just run for you - they run around like crazy and only if you trigger them, will they attack you
Storms may break your electricity or generators (not like destroy, but make them useless during the storm) - this could make horde nights "fun" if you rely on turrets fx (though storms during horde nights should be super rare)

Anyways, that's just what I had on the top of my head.

Thanks for reading (if you actually read it)
 
Barnebarn said:
I'm not sure in which forum, this all fits in, but I will try here, as it seems the most obvious place.

I've now played the 2.0 stable version on Xbox as a sledge/shutgun guy to level 110+, progressed through all biomes by moving my small base from roof to roof, and have done all quests and high level POI's to a point, where they are now no longer challenging.

Instead of going into all the many changes of 2.0, here are just a quick overview before I go into the biome progression and storms:

Generally, I love the 2.0 version
New POI's and changes to POI's etc are awesome
New skills are awesome
General tab is kinda meh (I put 2 points in it in total during 110+ levels) and feels off vs. the other skills
New zombies are cool, but way to frequent in their biomes to a point, where they just get annoying
New zombie levels are very cool, as it forces you to priorities zombies when doing quests (kill blues first in quest, orange first on horde nights etc)
Random map generation is very good now. I love how alive the world feels now. Everywhere pretty much have something to check out and explore.
Several of the same traders feels so strange?

Okay, lets do biome progression:

I understand it, but I don't like it. It feels like pulling 2 game days out of my calender just border surfing until I have gotten the items needed to complete the quest and move into the new biome. It's just a waste of time and if I don't have to hunt mushrooms ever again, I'm all for it. And I dunno if mushrooms in burnt forest are just rare or just spawn in too late for me to see on Xbox, but I have to be pretty close to spot them, so took me forever. Mushrooms in wasteland I figured out are super easy to spot - just wait till night and they glow up.

I will not play another game with biome progression on, that's for sure.

But, instead of just saying it's all bad - here's my brainstorm for how to make biome progression a better more immersive thing:

Once you've done your 10 quests in forest biome, you get a quest to unlock the next trader in burnt forest. And not just find him - make it similar to the biome progression, but allow me to be in the biome, so I can actually move there and do my quest there.
The forest trader will not give you any level 2 quests until you unlock the next biome - so you can stay and do more level 1 quests - but if you want to progress, you need to unlock the next trader (which unlocks level 2 quests for all traders).
New trader is locked until you do his quest
Biome is "safe" to stay in, so people can move there, but instead of the current you slowly die after 3 min, give people some debuff that matches the biome:
Fx. Burnt forest will give you a debuff of 50% faster dehydration and you are 10% slower (movement, weapons etc) -
Fx. Desert will give you a debuff of 50% faster dehydration and armor debuff for every item higher than light armor (sweating or whatever) and 10% slower
Fx. Snow will give you a debuff of 50% more hunger and armor debuff for every non-heavy item worn (freezing or whatever) and 15% slower (due to snow)
Fx. Wasteland will give you a debuff of 50% more hunger and thirst and make you 25% slower

Doing the biome quest then unlocks the trader and removes the debuffs.


Okay, storms next.

Storms are literally just a stop playing mechanism. They are just a waste of time and forces me to wait in some room for 10+ min. Annoying if doing POI's as I have to just stand and wait - and more annoying when traveling through biomes and you drive into a new biome just to drive into a storm - so you have to drive out and wait just outside the biome peeking your head in from time to time to see when it's done.

I turned off storms after I completed my quests in the Wasteland - and I won't be turning storms on again in any new games.

But again - here are some brainstom ideas for storms, that I feel could actually make them worth it:

Instead of a "you slowly die" if you are in the stom how about:
Storms lower your visibility from a few to several meters with some fog of war kinda around you (black smoke in burnt, brown in desert, white snowstorm in snow, green toxic in wasteland etc)
Storms trigger new zombies that digs up from below ground (like worms in rain) - some new type of zombie would be cool
Storms trigger more roaming zombies spawning around you (not just besides you, but in your area)
Storms make zombies crazy (like now) - faster, deadlier - but more random - they don't just run for you - they run around like crazy and only if you trigger them, will they attack you
Storms may break your electricity or generators (not like destroy, but make them useless during the storm) - this could make horde nights "fun" if you rely on turrets fx (though storms during horde nights should be super rare)

Anyways, that's just what I had on the top of my head.

Thanks for reading (if you actually read it)
Click to expand...
1-my thoughts, the new special biome zombies, a nice addition, frost claw modeling aside, they add difficulty and challenge, but yes, they look too many to the point of looking like clone war, the new colored zombies are horrible from an aesthetic standpoint, the burning zombie in the burnt biome makes sense but out of there no, the blue orange and green all together make a kind of rgb hordes, the fact that they are tough is good. my suggestion on this would be to make only the eyes colored or add new modeling, old feral style.


2-the randomly generated worlds feel practically the same from one to another with little change, new poi are always appreciated.

3-biome progression, I am not interested in biome progression as many are, I think it is a matter of taste, I don't think there is any change that would make me activate this option, I am just not interested. regarding the buff and debuff of biomes, I thought I read that the developers are working on the temperature system for the future, it should be separate from the biome progression.

4- the storms, it has already been shown several times that they do not force you to hide and wait for afk. it is a matter of player skill and resources, driving to the biome and being slowed down by a storm can be solved with a mod that allows you to drive and not lose health while inside the vehicle-4x4 only the rest of the vehicles makes sense that you can not drive them in the storm.

lowering the visibility is ok to some extent.

digging zombies sounds weird and with the design of the poi i don't think it will have any impact other than getting trapped underground in the hard blocks.

zombies should always be looking for the player, seeing zombies running around has no impact on the gameplay.

storms break the electicity, I don't think this option is very well liked by players, it basically makes your base useless, if it has been designed with traps in mind, especially for those who like to live in these biomes. but it could be just momentary lightning cuts, then it would make sense.
 
I also will likely leave biome progression disabled in future games. The challenges just aren't what I want to be doing. I don't need to find mushrooms because I grow them, so those have a slight value, but not much. I don't want to spend forever hunting specific zombies or just running around wasting time while waiting for the timer to finish in every biome. Smoothies are pretty much pointless. I've used 1 and completed all badges (technically I haven't completed wasteland because I need to find more super corn first, but everything else with it is complete). The others that I made are just sitting in a crate and will remain there until I start a new game. Sure, I could sell them or just drink them for the food/water boost, but why bother? And super corn is a bad choice unless they started to make it appear in more locations. The Carl's Corn POI is the best place to find it, but that doesn't always appear on a map, or it could be far out of your way to find it. No one wants to spend hours upon hours trying to find a single POI to get the super corn. I'm not sure if they started making it appear in corn fields or other POI, though. I found one somewhere, so maybe they did, but I wasn't paying attention when I found it. Thankfully, I do have custom POI on my map as well, and there is at least one other POI that is guaranteed to have it. But it's still not great unless you can buy it or the seeds for it or it is more common.

So yeah, biome progression doesn't impress me at all. It's just drudge work. If the challenges were interesting, it might be different. Or even if they were things I'd be doing anyway. The intro challenges don't bother me too much because most of those things I'll need to do anyhow (I would still prefer not having to make clubs or bows and arrows). But the biome ones just aren't worth it. I don't mind too much that you need to get protection to stay in the biome and if the challenges were entirely redone to be worth it, I might use the biome progression. But as it is now, it just isn't worth it to me.

Storms have received changes in 2.1 and I haven't tried 2.1 yet, so I really can't comment on what I think of them in the updated version of them. I might be fine with them once I'm on 2.1. But in 2.0, I don't like them. They are always getting in the way of me doing something that I'm trying to do. It's especially annoying when trying to complete a biome badge to have to wait out a storm to finish working on it. If storms only had a 25% chance to damage you with each proc instead of 100%, that would make it possible to be out in them and I might not mind them so much. As it is, they are just a pointless annoyance. If I feel the same after the 2.1 changes, I'll just disable them. I'd rather not do that because I like the storms in concept, but the implementation leaves me just being annoyed by them.
 
Riamus said:
And super corn is a bad choice unless they started to make it appear in more locations. The Carl's Corn POI is the best place to find it, but that doesn't always appear on a map, or it could be far out of your way to find it. No one wants to spend hours upon hours trying to find a single POI to get the super corn. I'm not sure if they started making it appear in corn fields or other POI, though. I found one somewhere, so maybe they did, but I wasn't paying attention when I found it. Thankfully, I do have custom POI on my map as well, and there is at least one other POI that is guaranteed to have it. But it's still not great unless you can buy it or the seeds for it or it is more common.
Click to expand...
Rekt always has super corn/super corn seeds in his inventory, from I can tell. But getting the recipe does require finding Carl's Corn as far as I'm aware (at least I've never seen it anywhere else.)
 
Vaeliorin said:
Rekt always has super corn/super corn seeds in his inventory, from I can tell. But getting the recipe does require finding Carl's Corn as far as I'm aware (at least I've never seen it anywhere else.)
Click to expand...
Thanks. I'll check. I rarely buy things, so didn't notice.
 
Vaeliorin said:
Rekt always has super corn/super corn seeds in his inventory, from I can tell. But getting the recipe does require finding Carl's Corn as far as I'm aware (at least I've never seen it anywhere else.)
Click to expand...
I looted the super corn seed recipe from a random car either part of a gas station POI or some other. Wasn't at Carl's Corn (never found it in my squad's 2.0 run). Couple others had it via quest reward option.
 
Kazgrel said:
I looted the super corn seed recipe from a random car either part of a gas station POI or some other. Wasn't at Carl's Corn (never found it in my squad's 2.0 run). Couple others had it via quest reward option.
Click to expand...
That's good to know, thanks. I was a bit annoyed to find that there were things that required super corn now, but there was no guarantee that I'd find the seed recipe.

I have gotten the sham secret recipe as a trader reward, so they've apparently changed the availability of these things at some point.
 
Biome progression: Since I primarily play the game as a co-op multiplayer, biome progression will remain off unless it sees a significant overhaul. In its current state, it is obnoxious, to put it nicely.

Storms: I just want to be able to see the storm from a distance from another biome. In my 2.0 playthrough I was driving a truck thru the pine forest in route to our desert base. Soon as I entered the desert, storm warning sounds off, and as I go to slow and turn, the truck just slides sideways for a good hundred feet sideways into a tree, which stopped it and took off 30% of its health. Took a tick or two of damage before I made it back to pine forest, but was really annoyed. Despite that, I like having storms be part of the gameplay. Just needs some tweaks.
 
Kazgrel said:
Biome progression: Since I primarily play the game as a co-op multiplayer, biome progression will remain off unless it sees a significant overhaul. In its current state, it is obnoxious, to put it nicely.

Storms: I just want to be able to see the storm from a distance from another biome. In my 2.0 playthrough I was driving a truck thru the pine forest in route to our desert base. Soon as I entered the desert, storm warning sounds off, and as I go to slow and turn, the truck just slides sideways for a good hundred feet sideways into a tree, which stopped it and took off 30% of its health. Took a tick or two of damage before I made it back to pine forest, but was really annoyed. Despite that, I like having storms be part of the gameplay. Just needs some tweaks.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I had the same experience on my motorcycle when crossing to another biome. You slide so far trying to turn around that it's very difficult to get back to the other biome without taking damage. That is bad enough, but if you also damage your vehicle like you did, it just compounds the annoyance. Without a way to see there is a storm ahead, it's not something I would want to have enabled. If they can't get it to show visually right away, they should at least consider a temporary warning if you're within a certain distance of a biome that has a storm in it so you can stop before entering it.
 
InfiniteWarrior said:
The vehicles are a little...floaty. Any way to make 'em stick to the road a little better?
Click to expand...
There may be way to adjust that with modding the vehicles.xml file, but I don't what each parameter is there. That wouldn't affect how it handles in storms, but from a quick look, I don't see where storms are handled and it's probably changed wherever that is.
 
Riamus said:
There may be way to adjust that with modding the vehicles.xml file,
Click to expand...
I'm not sure it's something that can be modded away. They could stick to the road better in general, not just in storms. They could also handle hilly terrain better, especially the 4x4, supposedly made for rough terrain. Possibly would require the addition of gears and driving modes to put the vehicles in. I'd think that's under the hood stuff, no pun intended.
 
InfiniteWarrior said:
I'm not sure it's something that can be modded away. They could stick to the road better in general, not just in storms. They could also handle hilly terrain better, especially the 4x4, supposedly made for rough terrain. Possibly would require the addition of gears and driving modes to put the vehicles in. I'd think that's under the hood stuff, no pun intended.
Click to expand...
Hills can be changed just by increasing (or decreasing) the torque property in vehicles.xml. Assuming you mean their ability to go up steep inclines. Other handling is part of the XML, letting you have different handling for different vehicles. I just don't mess with it, so don't know about grip. Maybe that one isn't configurable by XML, but it would be odd if you can configure the other things and not that. Maybe someone who mods vehicles will see this and state if it can be modified or not.
 
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