PC Is "Horde Night" a bad mechanic?

[KhaineGB]

This got me thinking….sooo…

1. Telric has “thumper” mod which is like a alien crash landing and zeds come out. It’s fun and can really mess you up if you’re not ready to fight them if they land nearby your base/location. Additionally, you can get parts from thumpers to make your own thumper and then it acts like a zed beacon and you defend it for a bit…

2. There’s gnamod horde mode, which is a “defend the beacon forever” thing, where the zeds really really hate the beacon and attack it, and eventually it will blow up and make a big hole once you fail to defend it enough.

for both mods, the “zombie beacon” is essentially “player placed” or “purposefully placed”…

taking these “existing things” and smooshing them together may create a mini in game “event” that might shake things up….I present the half baked idea of: make a beacon (of unknown type/duration/health) randomly drop.  When the beacon is damaged enough, it leaves a masive crater in the ground, massively damaging all entities and blocks like a bomber zed x10.

”randomly drop”: I imagine the supply plane could drop it, but then it wouldn’t always be “close enough to make you deal with it”, so maybe “randomly drop” could be like a screamer spawn (except beacon spawn) where it crashes down when the heat level is too high (and near your base/location) or maybe a zombie randomly drops a beacon like a loot bag drops. Maybe a bomber zed drops them more often if you kill them before they explode . If you’re “out and about” and one drops: run away if you want to. If it’s near your base: you choose to defend/defuse or deal with the damage.

it would be kind of like a “oh crap!” Game moment, even during horde night,  and you almost would have to defend the beacon or it wrecks havoc to your base or the land around it until it auto defuses (or you defuse it or maybe just pick it up?), and it would also kinda add a “secret mini boss” to the game.

Oh, i've been experimenting with no BM and completely random wandering hordes.

4-8 hours so you can get several per day, with 30-60 zombies.

THAT makes things interesting.

 

[Kam R.]

The predictability of the bloodmoon event makes it a short lived source of excitement. I'm definitely seeing it more of a chore these days than something to look forward to. Sure until a player has figured it out there will be a few exciting weeks of figuring it out. Then it's pure routine.

Sure, we have randomization for the day they happen now, but it's still pretty predictable, even with the red warning day number turned off.

After playing a bit every player knows "at 22h I got to be ready, so watch out for the glaring warning signs roughly 10 minutes ahead of it happening". Whatever ready may be, in the fortified trapped base or on the roof of a strong prefab.

Khaine's random hordes mechanic is a step in the right direction, imo, however the pathing of those wanderers is kinda messed up since a few alphas and they often straight up miss you and end up scattered somewhere on a meadow.

If the bloodmoon event mechanic with the GPS-Zs could be randomized in a similar fashion it would be epic.

No specific time of the day!

No sound effects, music or skybox giving it away, only Z sounds and footsteps.

A randomized duration for the event. A randomized set of waves of enemies only ROUGHLY based on gamestage, but with a chance to be way more difficult.

Biome specific hordes attacking.

Modified and stronger GPS events when near heat sources aka tower defense situations - just with the twist you have to always be ready for them.

This would keep the player on their toes and guarantee a lot of fun oh-@%$#-moments.

And then have a new rare event type - actual bloodmoon. The sky turns red as we know it, but as soon as the sky turned red you have 7 days before a massive mega flood that lasts for 7 days will come for you. :]

As a main premise current BM-mechanic feels pointless to me. I applaude mods like "true survival", which actually put in obtainable long term goals through long chain quests that make you explore, craft, build and fight to find a solution to the problems of this world and not just make you kinda live with it until you're bored. That's the sorta stuff that should be the main premise of a Zombie apocalypse game. I'm curious to see whether TFP will ever cook up some good main quest line for the vanilla game.

 

[TWORDY]

Honestly, Blood Moons are one of many features that keep me playing 7DTD, but not the most important in my humble eyes. New people to the title are excited but only for like first Blood Moons. Unfortunately, but after discovering that this particular event goes on and on, there is nothing to look forward to in that matter. Hopefully, after beating the horde night there are no longer meat piles, that`s a plus. Constant repairments of the base might seem notorious, resource-draining, grindy, (you name it) but that`s the current mechanic of horde nights. Some of the mates are waiting for the next alpha and game-changing updates, and for them, not much has changed since alpha 17 when it comes to gameplay mechanics.

For me, more interesting would be defending objects/bases in different biomes specifically designed by the devs rather than constantly build and repair Your own base in a never-ending loop. In the form of a mission acquired in the trader menus, the game still would have tower defense features and lose a taste of compulsory grindness.

The biggest issue that I encounter is sudden frames per second slashed during horde nights by about 50%, same happens when screamer(s!) come at me in the 5th LVL building around day 60. Once we had to deal with like (me and my mates while I hosted the game) 30+ zombies roaming around a building causing serious problems, having dropped to like 20FPS - R9 3900X, RTX 2070... hello sunshine? 

I would definitely see more random events like roaming hordes, defending pre-created POIs like fortified bases created by the devs, and having them burnt to the ground. Please work on missions, add a variety of objectives, explore other games, and even genres to look for inspiration.

On a positive note, everything gets predictable and boring after hundreds of hours...

 

[KhaineGB]

The predictability of the bloodmoon event makes it a short lived source of excitement. I'm definitely seeing it more of a chore these days than something to look forward to. Sure until a player has figured it out there will be a few exciting weeks of figuring it out. Then it's pure routine.

Sure, we have randomization for the day they happen now, but it's still pretty predictable, even with the red warning day number turned off.

After playing a bit every player knows "at 22h I got to be ready, so watch out for the glaring warning signs roughly 10 minutes ahead of it happening". Whatever ready may be, in the fortified trapped base or on the roof of a strong prefab.

Khaine's random hordes mechanic is a step in the right direction, imo, however the pathing of those wanderers is kinda messed up since a few alphas and they often straight up miss you and end up scattered somewhere on a meadow.

If the bloodmoon event mechanic with the GPS-Zs could be randomized in a similar fashion it would be epic.

No specific time of the day!

No sound effects, music or skybox giving it away, only Z sounds and footsteps.

A randomized duration for the event. A randomized set of waves of enemies only ROUGHLY based on gamestage, but with a chance to be way more difficult.

Biome specific hordes attacking.

Modified and stronger GPS events when near heat sources aka tower defense situations - just with the twist you have to always be ready for them.

This would keep the player on their toes and guarantee a lot of fun oh-@%$#-moments.

And then have a new rare event type - actual bloodmoon. The sky turns red as we know it, but as soon as the sky turned red you have 7 days before a massive mega flood that lasts for 7 days will come for you. :]

As a main premise current BM-mechanic feels pointless to me. I applaude mods like "true survival", which actually put in obtainable long term goals through long chain quests that make you explore, craft, build and fight to find a solution to the problems of this world and not just make you kinda live with it until you're bored. That's the sorta stuff that should be the main premise of a Zombie apocalypse game. I'm curious to see whether TFP will ever cook up some good main quest line for the vanilla game.

Adding the GPS to the wandering horde SHOULD be fairly easy. But in my experience, it doesn't matter if they have it or not. They head to your last known position.

So if you happened to be looting a POI at the time...

 

[Roland]

They head to your last known position.

There is supposed to be a random distance at which they pass by your last known location. So they could pass by 10 meters away and have a good chance of noticing you or they could pass by 40 meters away and neither you nor they notice each other. Very few wandering hordes should be zeroing in and heading straight at you. Of course, with feral sense enabled in A20 even the ones 40 meters away have a good chance of sensing  you and turning from their course to come after you, 

There are daily wandering hordes in A19 but they start small and because they pass by at a variable distance it is very easy to not notice them. People think wandering hordes were taken out or are bugged but they still spawn and wander daily and it isn't until your gamestage results in larger hordes that you start really noticing them. I increased the horde size dramatically for A19 and was amazed to see regular wandering hordes from Day 1-- now very noticeable even when walking by at a distance.

 

[KhaineGB]

There is supposed to be a random distance at which they pass by your last known location. So they could pass by 10 meters away and have a good chance of noticing you or they could pass by 40 meters away and neither you nor they notice each other. Very few wandering hordes should be zeroing in and heading straight at you. Of course, with feral sense enabled in A20 even the ones 40 meters away have a good chance of sensing  you and turning from their course to come after you, 

There are daily wandering hordes in A19 but they start small and because they pass by at a variable distance it is very easy to not notice them. People think wandering hordes were taken out or are bugged but they still spawn and wander daily and it isn't until your gamestage results in larger hordes that you start really noticing them. I increased the horde size dramatically for A19 and was amazed to see regular wandering hordes from Day 1-- now very noticeable even when walking by at a distance.

Yep, there is. It picks a pos close to you and heads that way and there's a random variable applied to it.

But still, when you have 4-8 hour gaps of 30-60 zombies... even if they are a chunk away, they WILL hear you if you're in a POI looting.

It's absolutely insane. I love it. (obviously this is A19. I would love to test it on A20 with the feral sense)

 

[meganoth]

The predictability of the bloodmoon event makes it a short lived source of excitement. I'm definitely seeing it more of a chore these days than something to look forward to. Sure until a player has figured it out there will be a few exciting weeks of figuring it out. Then it's pure routine.

Sure, we have randomization for the day they happen now, but it's still pretty predictable, even with the red warning day number turned off.

After playing a bit every player knows "at 22h I got to be ready, so watch out for the glaring warning signs roughly 10 minutes ahead of it happening". Whatever ready may be, in the fortified trapped base or on the roof of a strong prefab.

Khaine's random hordes mechanic is a step in the right direction, imo, however the pathing of those wanderers is kinda messed up since a few alphas and they often straight up miss you and end up scattered somewhere on a meadow.

If the bloodmoon event mechanic with the GPS-Zs could be randomized in a similar fashion it would be epic.

No specific time of the day!

No sound effects, music or skybox giving it away, only Z sounds and footsteps.

A randomized duration for the event. A randomized set of waves of enemies only ROUGHLY based on gamestage, but with a chance to be way more difficult.

Biome specific hordes attacking.

Modified and stronger GPS events when near heat sources aka tower defense situations - just with the twist you have to always be ready for them.

This would keep the player on their toes and guarantee a lot of fun oh-@%$#-moments.

And then have a new rare event type - actual bloodmoon. The sky turns red as we know it, but as soon as the sky turned red you have 7 days before a massive mega flood that lasts for 7 days will come for you. :]

As a main premise current BM-mechanic feels pointless to me. I applaude mods like "true survival", which actually put in obtainable long term goals through long chain quests that make you explore, craft, build and fight to find a solution to the problems of this world and not just make you kinda live with it until you're bored. That's the sorta stuff that should be the main premise of a Zombie apocalypse game. I'm curious to see whether TFP will ever cook up some good main quest line for the vanilla game.

Surely TFP will cook up a vanilla story line (with or without quests). But don't expect too much as it will be a story fit for vanilla, i.e. a story that first-time players will have a chance to reach. For old time players it will look like any of the mods has cooked up 5 times of that and they will race through that story content.

 But that is because vanilla is the entry-level for new players and the mods are supposed to entertain players in the long run. And for vanilla and new players a fixed blood-moon is more than enough.

 

[ijese]

I always thought the game needed some kind of "infestation nodes" which you have to clear or face consequences for ignoring. The zombie spawns shouldn't be random in explored areas. Maybe if you don't clear them, the zombie presence in the chunks around the "nest" becomes more and more numerous until it's too difficult to move around and you have to gear way up and go full on assault mode to clear it.

I like this idea very much.

I usually set the world to intentionally prolong the time it takes me to feel secure and all-set, when I get bored and just start a new world. (Last dozen games were: no traders, no nerdpole, dead-is-dead, lower loot, no loot respawn, lower xp, random bloodmoon, pure wasteland map... first several tries were terrifying).

If we had pressing reason to actually prepare and clear that SGM factory ASAP, that might be a great motivator to "step up".  And also I feel somewhat cheated when I clear half a city and soon zombies are again all there, not just random stragglers. So the mechanic of having zombie "spawn POIs" might really improve both of the above.

 

[saltychipmunk]

To be fair , static worlds are a problem most of the survival genre has, not just 7d2d.  Its why crossing the very low bar of having even one interesting event  is enough to keep 7d2d relevant in the survival genre despite basically being mostly .. mincraft block mechanics with  higher fidelity zombies. 

I really dont understand why so many are like this when you have a few standouts like terraria or don't starve  and rimworld (especially dont starve) that deliberately throw tons of different events at the players to keep them on their toes. 

The funny thing is  if you look at rimworld and don't starve.. those two games  utilize many of the same mechanics to keep things interesting.

Weather.. being something that actually forces you to change up your play style and gear in a cshort period of time

Seasons.. for forcing play style changes over the long term 

indirect hostile forces that wont kill the player  immediately  but make life harder the longer the players leave it alone ( defoliators, ground poisoners , weather adjusters , infestations, bandit camps setting up shop near by)

Heck once TFP get the AI for bandits working properly.. the game could have a mechanic where survivors ask for help over a radio  at traders and you go help some npc survivors fend off  some bandits. 

The possibilities are quite extensive. 

When the good thing is that if you have all these other mechanics .. you don't necessary need a super complex blood moon anymore