New Horde Ideas

[Mytheos]

Hordes are what make this game, and it being great or good is going to end with how well the hordes are balanced.

The problem the game has had for awhile now is that there have been ways to trivialize or bypass the hordes with little effort from the player, such as underground bases, or knocking out the stairs of large buildings.

There was a time when you could surround a house with spikes and just make some repairs, there were times when hordes would rip through everything you could do like paper and you were really only left with the trivialization methods.

People made pits, they made platforms to meet the changes made over time.

Essentially the questions are:

How can hordes be a challenge long term?

How can people be allowed to move around the map with a Nomad playstyle?

How can hordes progress over time so players feel they need to keep upgrading their setups to survive?

First with the age old trivialization methods, they need to go and we need to accept that when hordes become trivial much of the game's pressure and reason to progress ends.

Underground - Zombies or at least dogs need to be able to dig to threaten underground bases.

Knock out the stairs - Spider zombies need to be able to climb and attack vertical surfaces correctly

Platforms - AI needs to be better to challenge them, spiders work correctly etc.

Pits - Various ways, including fall damage not killing some zombies.

Then we need new mechanics to help answer the above posed questions.

Player placed blocks and items could have a "Value" rating, and that could raise horde difficulty...more established bases get hit harder in a way that matches more closely the player's progression based on blocks, traps, chests, forges etc placed in an area.

This would cause any horde attack on a "new" area to be lessened so nomads would have a chance, and players could choose to move around a bit over time or if their last based was mostly destroyed beyond being repaired.

The trade off being Nomads have an easier time vs the hordes, but will progress slower overall and have to deal with a sometimes higher risk and different risks from not having a well established base.

We need to start having horde "types" or having them specialized vs certain types of defenses...which can be random.

Hordes may be mostly heavy hitters to break down fortifications and wear down heavy trap setups.

Hordes might be mostly swarm/high mobility types such as dogs/spiders/vultures to chase down fleeing players as well as dig/climb/fly over walls and traps more easily. ( Spiders should take minimal damage for climbing over spikes etc )

Balanced hordes to present an overall challenge.

Maybe even a situation to where survivors or raiders attack on horde night before a horde in desperation to find shelter from the oncoming tides of undead, with random specialized setups.

Essentially players might think they have it figured out until they randomly hit the right kind of raid or horde combination to overwhelm their defenses...or progress far enough into the game to where new horde types start showing up.

You will always have to fear what may come and never know exactly what you may be facing while always trying to optimize your base to handle new varied threats and horde/raid combos.

 

[Kam R.]

[...]Essentially the questions are:

How can hordes be a challenge long term?

How can people be allowed to move around the map with a Nomad playstyle?

How can hordes progress over time so players feel they need to keep upgrading their setups to survive?[...]

I think this is missing another question:

Which rewards can hordes offer making it worth fighting them?

As long as it feels like a waste of time to fight them, people will look for the nearest "trivialization"-method. You may throw in as many countermeasures as you like, they will find new ways. The number one reason for logging out during BM I hear (and 100% agree with) is "They eat up so much ammo/ other resources and barely give anything back for the week-long preparation put in." So of course people go for just avoiding them and look for cheap solutions. Just removing the possibility for such cheap solutions alone won't improve the experience imo.

 

[Mytheos]

I think this is missing another question:
Which rewards can hordes offer making it worth fighting them?

As long as it feels like a waste of time to fight them, people will look for the nearest "trivialization"-method. You may throw in as many countermeasures as you like, they will find new ways. The number one reason for logging out during BM I hear (and 100% agree with) is "They eat up so much ammo/ other resources and barely give anything back for the week-long preparation put in." So of course people go for just avoiding them and look for cheap solutions. Just removing the possibility for such cheap solutions alone won't improve the experience imo.

I think some people see hordes as a condition for survival...like eating food, you dont get a grand reward for doing it, you just survive to play the game longer.

( Yes for now, you get a wellness bonus, and in the future maybe some other bonus once wellness is removed, but you dont have the option to stop doing it because you dont feel its worth the reward. )

Other people see the hordes as some type of raid boss that if defeated should drop piles of loot.

Personally I think the hordes should be more focused towards being an aspect of survival, as they are at the top of the list on things you have to survive, and without them, most of the challenge of the game evaporates.

You can eventually work on ways to make people face them, I suppose thats the concept of this post...in your example of Multiplayer with people logging out you can always have the AI process at a lower level and cause various random levels of damage to bases that were "active" recently, as a quick example if people log off for horde night

I have no issue with adding a reward system to defeating them however, and if the game calculated a value for how well you did and had a plane drop a supply crate on your location based on zombies killed, how they were killed, number of player deaths etc, that would be fine as well.

They could even have the traders offer quests, discounts or special inventory that last a week based on it as well.

However giving out various rewards for the horde is going to be something to sort after you sort their survival aspect first, and a much easier prospect to be honest.

 

[Pico]

The idea of linking horde strength with the grade of building material that predominates seems a good one.

Personally, I think they are going too far with a whole bunch of things. They have a map that is so big that it becomes almost impossible to explore it properly.

They're making buildings so risky to explore that any looting or quests will take an age to tackle, or will have to be done with a 'do it and die' attitude, which is contrary to the purpose of the game.

They're making hordes more threatening and destructive, so you have to waste more and more time and resources on defending and repairing a base.

They're essentially squeezing survival out of the game by making it too hard to survive. Progression and exploration will slow to a crawl as so much time gets lost to defence.

As for the trap of break out floors - I think its a lousy strategy. Might as well just spawn a cop on top of the player if you want to be that evil.

 

[Mytheos]

The idea of linking horde strength with the grade of building material that predominates seems a good one.
Personally, I think they are going too far with a whole bunch of things. They have a map that is so big that it becomes almost impossible to explore it properly.

They're making buildings so risky to explore that any looting or quests will take an age to tackle, or will have to be done with a 'do it and die' attitude, which is contrary to the purpose of the game.

They're making hordes more threatening and destructive, so you have to waste more and more time and resources on defending and repairing a base.

They're essentially squeezing survival out of the game by making it too hard to survive. Progression and exploration will slow to a crawl as so much time gets lost to defence.

As for the trap of break out floors - I think its a lousy strategy. Might as well just spawn a cop on top of the player if you want to be that evil.

If they gave each player placed block etc a value this would also help out MP, to where you have a single new guy in a small base getting less powerful hordes while a 5 person party in a well established huge base would get a massive one.

Just thought of another issue it'd help mitigate/solve.

 

[ArcticPrism]

This topic is always so controversial because of the community split with people who don't want to fight the horde and those that do. It's fine to take away all the ways to avoid the horde but if they do then give people who don't want to fight them the option to turn off 7 day hordes.

The problem with hordes is they are punishing, unrewarding and completely avoidable all at the same time. Fighting the horde is a huge resource drain and you get basically nothing for it most of the time. There's also a number of ways to avoid them completely. Unless you want an extra challenge there's no reason to fight it if you don't have to.

The game's performance is also bad. Large hordes destroy FPS, especially if in a city unless you have an amazing PC.

No one I know bothers to fight them anymore. Everyone just goes afk inside of some skyscraper or logs off.

If you could turn off the warning weather and make horde days random they might be kind of interesting. You'll never know if one will show up or not. It would be a bandaid fix at most though. Wouldn't stop people from doing the usual tricks to avoid them though. You'd just have a chance to get caught out.

 

[KanedaSyndrome]

Force players out of their homes for ressources. I don't think it's viable to make a design that will threaten all kinds of bases. Zombies are weak and dumb per default, but it's their numbers and patience that is scary.

Limit how self-sustainable you can be, and make venturing out more dangerous, such that you feel safe at home, but at risk when you're out.

 

[H4kkepeter]

I´m OK with that, IF the Z block damage gets reduced a lot.

You want realism? Go try punching a concrete wall with your bare fists and tell me, how much damage you've done to it.

Building a base is meant to secure your stuff. Yes, to the point you can watch the whole horde without firing a single shot by yourself.

I´m all in for more varied horde tactics, but concrete is concrete and rotten flesh is rotten flesh. Same goes for the radiated Z's. Show me that type of concrete that gets damage by radiation over a short period of time. It simply doesn't happen.

I think, the new AI MM's presented in one of his last videos will be great.

I always build my base (underground AND on surface) to counter every tactic a human would come up with and it freaks me out, that these retarded Z´s always zero in on my position, ripping through every concrete wall as if their rotten hands are made of tungsten steel instead of trying to find the weak spot I may have missed in my construction.

My last point is, as always, the same: After several weeks I have my fully automated areal denial system up and running with auto-turrets, electric fences, spikes and mines all around the base. Your´re suggesting to punish me for that tactic, although every intelligent player would do that, ingame and definitely in real life. Otherwise there would be no reason to build any defences, just let them kill you and it´s all over.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

"Hordes are punishing and not rewarding"

this is to all arguments in the direction of zombies beeing not rewarding:

You are living in an apocalypse! You should try and avoid killing zombies whenever you can and scavange for supplies! Zombies are there to make life hell for you... not to be some inconvinient loottransporter. If you don't want to be challenged, play creative.

I understand you point of view... ive always argued that traps should give xp... but zombies should be inconvinient to you... they should disrupt your lootruns as much as possible!

Otherwise this is just a farming simulator... :-/

 

[The Batman]

they should disrupt your lootruns as much as possible! Otherwise this is just a farming simulator... :-/

But the AI is way too bad to accomplish this. Instead it's just a bullet spunge.

I agree with what you're saying, but they need a lot more AI changes // More type of zombies // more complex gameplay.

In my opinion it can't be done the way the game currently is. I wouldn't mind seeing hordes dissapear. And instead just buff up all zombies at the 7th day and increase spawn rate by 5000% or something. But the performance can't handle that so it's a no go.

1. limited by performance.

2. limited by AI.

3. gameplay not complex enough to pose a threat.

That's my view on it.

 

[ArcticPrism]

"Hordes are punishing and not rewarding"
this is to all arguments in the direction of zombies beeing not rewarding:

You are living in an apocalypse! You should try and avoid killing zombies whenever you can and scavange for supplies! Zombies are there to make life hell for you... not to be some inconvinient loottransporter. If you don't want to be challenged, play creative.

I understand you point of view... ive always argued that traps should give xp... but zombies should be inconvinient to you... they should disrupt your lootruns as much as possible!

Otherwise this is just a farming simulator... :-/

Hordes aren't threatening to the player in their current state. Zombie AI is non-existent and zombie designs are too simple. The cop is the only one with any kind of real special abilities. Spider zombies are supposed to be able to climb walls... except they get stuck 90% of the time making that obnoxious noise and can only climb straight up which means adding a lip stops them. There's no reason to fight them when they are avoidable unless you want to play tower defense.

It's like night time, what's the point of going outside at night except for an extra challenge? It's way more difficult and provides no reward incentive to the player over day time.

 

[Mytheos]

This topic is always so controversial because of the community split with people who don't want to fight the horde and those that do. It's fine to take away all the ways to avoid the horde but if they do then give people who don't want to fight them the option to turn off 7 day hordes.
The problem with hordes is they are punishing, unrewarding and completely avoidable all at the same time. Fighting the horde is a huge resource drain and you get basically nothing for it most of the time. There's also a number of ways to avoid them completely. Unless you want an extra challenge there's no reason to fight it if you don't have to.

The game's performance is also bad. Large hordes destroy FPS, especially if in a city unless you have an amazing PC.

No one I know bothers to fight them anymore. Everyone just goes afk inside of some skyscraper or logs off.

If you could turn off the warning weather and make horde days random they might be kind of interesting. You'll never know if one will show up or not. It would be a bandaid fix at most though. Wouldn't stop people from doing the usual tricks to avoid them though. You'd just have a chance to get caught out.

Force players out of their homes for ressources. I don't think it's viable to make a design that will threaten all kinds of bases. Zombies are weak and dumb per default, but it's their numbers and patience that is scary.
Limit how self-sustainable you can be, and make venturing out more dangerous, such that you feel safe at home, but at risk when you're out.

Removing the game's namesake, or allowing it to be bypassed or turned off, I think is asking too much...it is very literally the name of the game.

What I am talking about is bringing balance to the hordes...your complaint they take too much resource etc to reasonably deal with is a part of that balance.

I am sure no one wants to spend 6 days to prepare for the 7 day horde, that removes many other aspects of the game.

What I believe people want is more reasonable designs and balance to deal with them...without limiting gameplay or making them trivial.

Or in other words fix them, dont allow them to be removed, at the end of the day you are only removing them if you either dont know what you are doing, or they are poorly balanced...or I guess you are just playing the game hoping for something it simply isnt....which is where mods come in.

So far as performance or FPS concerns, the game is in alpha, and there is no reason to assume it's optimized or cant handle large hordes in the future.

( I personally have never had any issue with the hordes so far as performance, 1080@60 FPS...A13 was the last time I dropped below that at all really )

 

[Mytheos]

I´m OK with that, IF the Z block damage gets reduced a lot. You want realism? Go try punching a concrete wall with your bare fists and tell me, how much damage you've done to it.

Building a base is meant to secure your stuff. Yes, to the point you can watch the whole horde without firing a single shot by yourself.

I´m all in for more varied horde tactics, but concrete is concrete and rotten flesh is rotten flesh. Same goes for the radiated Z's. Show me that type of concrete that gets damage by radiation over a short period of time. It simply doesn't happen.

I think, the new AI MM's presented in one of his last videos will be great.

I always build my base (underground AND on surface) to counter every tactic a human would come up with and it freaks me out, that these retarded Z´s always zero in on my position, ripping through every concrete wall as if their rotten hands are made of tungsten steel instead of trying to find the weak spot I may have missed in my construction.

My last point is, as always, the same: After several weeks I have my fully automated areal denial system up and running with auto-turrets, electric fences, spikes and mines all around the base. Your´re suggesting to punish me for that tactic, although every intelligent player would do that, ingame and definitely in real life. Otherwise there would be no reason to build any defences, just let them kill you and it´s all over.

The game isnt perfectly realistic, and never will be...you have to allow for a little crazy or you dont have a game.

Yes concrete is hard, but having the hordes trivialized early on doesnt make the game better, what makes the game better is having a system based on using intelligence to deal with said hordes, not throw up a small concrete box and win the game.

IF you want your base/storage safe...simply dont be in your storage/crafting base when the horde hits?

Myself I have a base for crafting/storage and use another "base" (platform) for fighting the hordes nearby.

No, I am not suggesting to punish you, I am suggesting you match the challenge to the player...if you have an awesome, amazing, crazy defense like you mention...you want minor pointless hordes that dont require that defense to win? Then why have it?

You match your defense to the threat...if you suck and have crap defense or get wrecked the game lowers the challenge a bit or ramps down somewhat the pace...if you are the king of survival you dont fall asleep and get bored until day 7,165 when the hordes finally start giving you a run for your money.

Its just adding another variable to scale the challenge to the player.

 

[Mytheos]

But the AI is way too bad to accomplish this. Instead it's just a bullet spunge.
I agree with what you're saying, but they need a lot more AI changes // More type of zombies // more complex gameplay.

In my opinion it can't be done the way the game currently is. I wouldn't mind seeing hordes dissapear. And instead just buff up all zombies at the 7th day and increase spawn rate by 5000% or something. But the performance can't handle that so it's a no go.

1. limited by performance.

2. limited by AI.

3. gameplay not complex enough to pose a threat.

That's my view on it.

The game is far from optimized or finished...we honestly dont know what the AI limitations are, nor the performance limitations yet.

I agree with you the hordes need to be more complex, and dynamic of course, and hope to generate some ideas how to do just that.

 

[ArcticPrism]

Removing the game's namesake, or allowing it to be bypassed or turned off, I think is asking too much...it is very literally the name of the game.
What I am talking about is bringing balance to the hordes...your complaint they take too much resource etc to reasonably deal with is a part of that balance.

I am sure no one wants to spend 6 days to prepare for the 7 day horde, that removes many other aspects of the game.

What I believe people want is more reasonable designs and balance to deal with them...without limiting gameplay or making them trivial.

Or in other words fix them, dont allow them to be removed, at the end of the day you are only removing them if you either dont know what you are doing, or they are poorly balanced...or I guess you are just playing the game hoping for something it simply isnt....which is where mods come in.

So far as performance or FPS concerns, the game is in alpha, and there is no reason to assume it's optimized or cant handle large hordes in the future.

( I personally have never had any issue with the hordes so far as performance, 1080@60 FPS...A13 was the last time I dropped below that at all really )

I don't see what the problem with having the option to disable it is. The game has a "creative mode" for people who just want to build stuff. Why shouldn't they be able to disable it and the rest of the zombies without modding?

I'm tired of hearing "it's still in Alpha" every time an early access game is criticized. This game has made lots of money and has been in Alpha for about 5 years now. It's far from being a niche game like so many Early Access games are. Why does a game with so much emphasis on zombies and the "7 day" gimmick have such bad AI? Why aren't the special zombies more threatening?

At this point the game would need a MAJOR overhaul to fix hordes and such. There's just so many little things that add up to a big problem that's been discussed a million times now. Even for new players it doesn't take long to figure out that you can avoid the hordes if you don't want to deal with them.

 

[vedrit]

My 2 cents:

The horde needs to be challenging (obviously, or why else play with zombies?) but at the same rate, they need to be able to be overcome. If you put players up against an impossible task (surviving the horde) then they'll likely stop playing.

And let me say this:

Loot only incentives the player to even attempt trying to survive the horde. Fine to give the horde some loot drop, but it's not the primary issue.

The way I see it, the player has a maximum power, a point where they can no longer earn skills to make the horde easier. The horde, on the other hand, has no theoretical limit. If the player continues to survive, the horde will become stronger.

Once the player reaches their power limit, they have to start relying on external tools; traps, turrets, and walls. But those, too, are limited. There's only so much time to repair, replace and re-arm that which was lost defending against the horde and sets the player up for a massive defeat: Once those turrets are out of ammo, and the traps destroyed, and the walls breached, the zombies can continue to destroy. This can be impossible to recover from.

And there is the primary problem. IMO.

 

[The Batman]

We need new incentives.

- Something valuable and special but it only has a chance to spawn and or appear in loot crates at night

- Horde nights have a bigger chance to get (special) items or trinkets.

Something that doesn't appear during the day or during regular gametime. Otherwise the only benefit is extra loot time with a MUCH higher chance of dieing. I would have no clue what the extra items could be but. Something in that direction could make horde nights and nights in general interesting AND feel more rewarding.

Again with the dying light reference.... I just love that game. During the night you get the special zombies right. Killing and or looting with those near could yield something different. Special set of skills? Raw rare materials? Something to make it engaging.

That's 100% missing in vanilla 7days at the moment.

 

[Pico]

Joel has posted a twitter image of what the horde did to a ranger station on a single night.

Ranger stations aren't much. They are just weak stone and wood, and this horde has flattened the base. There's only a fragment of one wall standing. All resources that may have been in that building have been lost. ALL lost.

So if you can't survive in a building, then you're going to want to store stuff off base, or in a backpack, and prey your backpack doesn't fall inside that building they are destroying.

I think this new destructo-horde is going to really suck, and they will have to do a major downgrade to Z block damage if they want to keep their audience of players.

 

[Tin]

My 2 cents:The horde needs to be challenging (obviously, or why else play with zombies?) but at the same rate, they need to be able to be overcome. If you put players up against an impossible task (surviving the horde) then they'll likely stop playing.

And let me say this:

Loot only incentives the player to even attempt trying to survive the horde. Fine to give the horde some loot drop, but it's not the primary issue.

The way I see it, the player has a maximum power, a point where they can no longer earn skills to make the horde easier. The horde, on the other hand, has no theoretical limit. If the player continues to survive, the horde will become stronger.

Once the player reaches their power limit, they have to start relying on external tools; traps, turrets, and walls. But those, too, are limited. There's only so much time to repair, replace and re-arm that which was lost defending against the horde and sets the player up for a massive defeat: Once those turrets are out of ammo, and the traps destroyed, and the walls breached, the zombies can continue to destroy. This can be impossible to recover from.

And there is the primary problem. IMO.

An Apocalypse has a limit? I thought one of the games premises was to see how far you can go, with all said limitations on the player? Always a new challenge pushing the player to the Razors Edge the further you progress. Till finally, finally! you reach that tipping point that only a few can overcome.

I just don't see the issue of things in the game progressing beyond the players abilities personally but if TFP make it so you can overcome everything so be it... time to ramp up the difficulty in my case! Maybe time for you to lower it?!

 

[ArcticPrism]

An Apocalypse has a limit? I thought one of the games premises was to see how far you can go, with all said limitations on the player? Always a new challenge pushing the player to the Razors Edge the further you progress. Till finally, finally! you reach that tipping point that only a few can overcome. I just don't see the issue of things in the game progressing beyond the players abilities personally but if TFP make it so you can overcome everything so be it... time to ramp up the difficulty in my case! Maybe time for you to lower it?!

The player outscales the game. Zombie strength never increases, only their numbers do. I can't see the game ever getting to a point where 7 day hordes aren't completely avoidable. It's just not going to happen unless they overhaul the entire game.