Ralathar44
New member
I threw a roll of masking tape into a crowd like a grenade and it solved the problem
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PC Open Letter to TFP's...
- Thread starter Demandred1957
- Start date
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RipClaw
Well-known member
He's not the only one.
Sounds like parents who give their child a Lego set with the intention of encouraging creativity, and then get angry if what the child builds is not what is on the package.
Finding exploits and integrating them into a base design is also creative.
I gotta agree i tried to build a legit base into one of the basic POI houses heres how it came down:
First try simply wood/stone up the walls and put spikes around the place, defend on the roof. Zombies broke one of the spikes in the weakest wall piece and swarmed us on the roof.
Second try, we made a ditch around the house and reinforced all walls. Made sure that the place where the zombies came in is double layered. Spikes repaired and more placed around. Zombies broke throught AGAIN one of the spikes at the weakest wall piece and swarmed us on the roof.
Third try, we made the ditch deeper, put mines in it, scattered even more spikes, made an outer wall what we can defend and placed turrets out. We made a kill corridor what we would defend while the base got as reinforced as possible. Zombies swarmed throught the kill corridor, swarmed throught the spikes, mines and the outer wall, beat down 1 spike and got into the house swarming us again on the roof.
All 3 attempts were made with "how would you defend a base" in mind in the most legit manner possible. Now we are at a point where we ditched all sense and create tower defense strategies what cheese the enemy AI. We built a big @%$*#! tower and a big ramp where we can continously shove zombies down so they cant overwhelm us, if this one doesnt work we are going to build a levitating base or go for the underground circling strategy.
Its no fun when your strategies all boil down to extreme cheese or absurdish amount of materials wasted.
See, this is one problem that I'm worried about.
As TFP tries to patch out exploits upon exploits, people will go further and further in the exploits department. Eventually, there will come a point where in the attempt to fight the latest exploits, the zombies have become so smart, it is simply impossible to play "normally". You'll need advanced building strategies that doesn't allow nomadic "I'll just camp out here for the night" style of defense
We are progressively getting closer to this, the basic strategy where you just hole up in any POI or build a basic house is already gone. Underground strategies need you to go much deeper to be safe from diggers and the wall on wall strategies are getting beaten by the flying and jumping enemies added to the game along with the demo zombies.
I wish TFP would stop for some months looking at exploits and take a look at some newbie playing the game and ask themselves "do we really want this guy to build 3 block high stone walls, dig ditches everywhere, waste 2K wood on spikes just to die on the horde night?" because we are reaching that point.
Seriously whats soo wrong with zombies barely navigating anywhere and just swarm the base from all directions? Give the horde 75% unpathed approach and 25% pathed approach to all zombies spawned in a wave, it would make legit basebuilding fun again and we wouldnt have to rely on sledgehammer/levitation/underground/spawn exploits to survive.
To me, it sounds more like parents who give their child a Lego set, and the child figures out that if they dump all the legos into the toilet and flush it the bathroom is turned into a wading pool. While creative, it is a completely unintended use of the item that breaks part of the home.
Of course you can integrate exploits into your base design creatively. But fixing broken parts of the game is part of the job TFP have in creating a game.
I don't believe they are trying to stifle creativity. I don't believe they see us as the enemy and look for ways to defeat us. I believe they are trying to fix things that they see as broken.
NBornkilla
New member
May I recommend you lower down game difficulty put all zombies to walk at all time and might as well play in god mode just so you can be safe.
What is missing in this story is how the zombies could get on the roof so easily? Did you leave stairs and/or broken walls so that zombies could easily ascend to your position?
For the first few horde nights nearly any POI can easily be turned into a horde base, but you need to make the upper floors inaccessible to the zombies (which usually means 4 or more blocks height difference), even from inside the building.
With better materials (i.e. concrete) you can make melee cages even on ground level, but even then an unreachable upper floor for backup is always needed.
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RipClaw
Well-known member
If you look at the Dungeon Style POIs you will notice that the path is often not directly visible to humans.
For example, climb up a trellis onto the roof and through a hole in the roof into the house. Most players work with frames in this case because they do not recognize the trellis as climbable.
In Alpha 16 this was still quite simple. You had a staircase and as soon as you removed the stairs here the zombies couldn't go up anymore.
That's why I prefer horde bases that were built from scratch. There I know every weak spot and know exactly which way the zombies will go.
Ralathar44
New member
I'm sorry but you have to be doing it wrong. I've run multiple bunker bases to day 50+ without issue. The walls are meant to be defended, not ignored. If you cannot watch/defend it and it's not covered by traps that can defend it then you're going to be breached somewhere eventually. You are meant to have to participate actively in your defense.
Here's an example of a simple bunker base I took to day 50+. Nothing crazy, just a basic square with arrow slits I can shoot through from inside. I got hit by the occasional buzzard but I just kiled them early horde nights and healed. Buzzards are annoying but not a big deal. A single turret later on solves that problem. Or a roof over your head with a few blade traps on it. As the days went on I added electrical fencing along the outside as well as blade traps. The inner row of electrical fencing was always on, outers rows had 1 switch per side and then later were motion sensor activated.
Here's another exmaple of a bunker base I made that was more traps oriented from the initial design. With current buzzard design I'd need to add like 2 shotgun turrets on the roof to be covered or a few blade traps. But that's nothing
. Here's a short ranged focused bunker base with a controlled entrance built around being able to use junk turrets. This is before the junk turret changes so I wouldn't need to constantly be reloading junk turrets and using 4 of them like I was in the video today. Thier ammo capacity during that patch was much lower and led to them constantly being out of ammo and needing to be reloaded. I don't think buzzards would be a problem but if they were I'd just set up 1-2 turrets wherever they came from.
It's not the zombie pathing that's the problem here. Design bases that you can defend the walls of OR leave a controlled entrance open where zombies will come in. And yes, I convert POIs all the time. It can still easily be done. You're just doing it wrong. No visibility of an area being attacked and slow response/rotation means breaches in your walls, as it should be. And if you're constantly leaving weaker walls than surrounding walls on the outside of your base....really that's just 100% your fault no excuses.
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RipClaw
Well-known member
I think you missed the first sentence. They didn't build a base from scratch, they converted a POI to a base. Your examples were all apparently bases that you built from scratch.
He explicitly said all areas were reinforced and the areas the zombies broke were double layered.
I think he's playing this from role playing a reasonable human being point of view. I'm not sure which POI he took, so I'm assuming he fortified a completely normal house, with stairs. Normally you simply don't destroy your own home. You reinforce the walls and shoot the enemies sure but not break the stairs down every week, that'd be painful to repair
So assuming this does happen IRL, a reasonable person would take the steps he outlined:
- Find somewhere to live in
- Reinforce that place with traps, ditches, and walls as reasonably as possible (i.e not all of it are end game blocks, ditches aren't 10 blocks deep 10 blocks wide)
- Shoot at the incoming enemies and fall back to the upper floors when necessary
NBornkilla
New member
i used a poi i converted part of it for my first horde night double wall cobble stone no spike and i survived no problem what so ever .
RipClaw
Well-known member
Nobody says you can't survive this but it's different to fight a horde in a base you built from scratch or if you use a converted POI.
In a base you built from scratch you know exactly what each block is made of and how much HP it has. You also know all access points. And with a little experience you can even tell where the zombies will attack.
JaWoodle had to learn this lesson when he modified a caravan into a bunker base. He fought two times a horde in this base and both times he had to realize that the zombies don't behave the way he thought they would.
He did not say the areas the zombies broke through were double layered.
He said for try 1, the walls were some wood, some stone. spikes around the outside and defend from roof. Zombies broke through a weak wall, climbed to the roof and swarmed them.
He said for try 2, they reinforced (upgraded?) the walls, double layered THE PLACE THE ZOMBIES BROKE THROUGH ON TRY 1, dug a ditch, repaired and increased spikes, all while apparently leaving intact the path to the roof. Even if you didn't break out the stairs for try #1, once you knew they could swarm you any reasonable person IRL would eliminate that path before try #2, even if not having stairs made it inconvenient the other 6 days of the week. They also did not double layer all walls, just the segment broken through the previous week.
For try 3, they actually made an effort to prepare for the horde, but yet again left a route onto the roof.
And as for his preps being like it is in pretty much all zombie flicks around, in those flicks usually the zombies breech the house and kill most of the people inside. So all in all, not a good strategy to follow.
When i use a poi for the horde and don't rely on height advantage, i set it up with strong outer walls and multiple fall-back positions inside, with iron bars to shoot through and an escape route from my last fall back position. It works fine for me, but I have to spend a day or so getting it prepared, not 10 minutes to upgrade a few walls to cobblestone and drop a few spikes.
In real life horror movies (
) you would not stand on the roof of the house, but reinforce doors and windows and try to barricade yourself in. This game doesn't follow real life because if that was a working strategy you would just amplyfy that by 4 and build a 4 block thick wall around the pois current wall and just wait out the horde night.This is a different reality where you can build gigantic buildings in less than a week and the zombies have to be adapted to that.
Again, they stood on the roof of the house, not followed your script. What use is standing on the roof of the house if the zombies need to break through just one wall to immediately get at them?
He did say that, you even quoted it in all caps. I'm not sure what you're talking about, I didn't say he double layered the entire POI.
I'm not sure what kind of zombie flicks you watch. The ones I watch usually end with the guys surviving. I suppose zombies from different parts of the world act differently
Isn't that basically "I'm building my base, but the walls is this shape?
Well, I don't like to presume that everyone who failed simply refused to fight and just embrace death as the zombies break in. It seems from multiple mentions of "defending", they didn't just stand there and actually do some fighting. Their story seems to imply that they did some fighting and the roof was their fallback position. I could be wrong, of course.
It's just that, not a single time have I ever seen anyone actually not fight. Like, at all.
Also, agreed on the zombies. They're adjusted to deal with reinforced concretes and cheesy tactics, he really should've used the same
The zombies broke through a single layered wall in try 1. For try 2, they double layered the wall that the zombies broke through for try one, but not the whole bottom floor. The zombies broke through a different single layered wall for try 2. Which, since they broke through an undefended single-layer wall made of wood or cobblestone on try 1, try 2 should have had a better set up, instead of leaving some single-layer wood/stone walls on the first floor.
As for zombie flicks, usually a couple people survive once the zombies overrun the base. What i said was that the zombies kill MOST of the people inside. tv series maybe only a few people get killed, but in the movies, most people die usually excepting the hero, his woman, and maybe a best friend.
And preparing for a massive horde of zombies coming on a specific day at a specific time every week would require renovations if you are going to fight them at home you just took over. For me, that would mean "living" in the upper floors and making the ground floor my defensive area. If you are saying that even though you know a massive horde of zombies will be attacking you in a week, dropping a few spikes outside and upgrading some walls to stone is adequate, common sense preparation, I will just have to respectfully disagree.
I'm not sure why, despite the lengthy paragraph documenting their third try, people keep focusing on the obviously-have-failed-thus-the-third-attempt first and second base. It's weird, really.
Ditches, spikes, mines, an outer wall, turrets, kill corridor. I don't see anything wrong there. What they most probably didn't do was exploit the zombies pathing, which is why they failed. Or progressed past the stone age maybe
FileMachete
New member
I can totally see what @Solomon describes happening. There's really nothing in the game that prepares new players for that first horde night experiance in 7dtd.
Imo his group didn't do anything "wrong", they simply had no idea what the game was going to throw at them.
That said, I really wish I could have a bit of selective amnesia to experiance again, for the first time, that first horde night.
I recall building a tiny little shack out in the woods with just upgraded wooden doors, walls and hatches over the windows and a ladder up to the roof for my first horde. Imagine how that went, lol.
My advice would be to -not- watch any vids. Have a bit of faith that it is possible to 'win' and keep trying new/different things.
The satisfaction of solving a problem is directly related to the difficulty of said problem after all.
However. Early Alpha 17 experimental would have seriously pissed me off had that been my first time playing 7dtd.
If you listen to @Ralathar44s commentary in the first vid he linked, and take in how much effort went into that base, for just the first horde night(!), it will give you an idea that actually TFPs have really toned down the early hordes in a18 and, it appears, even a bit more in a19.
A comparison a19exp vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi-vt5j0Yv8
I built a base very similar to the third one shown in the vid in early a17 experimental, but it also had a huge wooden spike field under it. It didn't last long. In PriMates vid the a19 zeds barely touch the poles. I was quite suprised as the AI did/is-supposed-to(?) get pissed if there isn't a path and start taking out supports.
So view it as a challenge, one that you -can- overcome, put the ole noggin in gear and get to work.
Imo his group didn't do anything "wrong", they simply had no idea what the game was going to throw at them.
That said, I really wish I could have a bit of selective amnesia to experiance again, for the first time, that first horde night.
I recall building a tiny little shack out in the woods with just upgraded wooden doors, walls and hatches over the windows and a ladder up to the roof for my first horde. Imagine how that went, lol.
My advice would be to -not- watch any vids. Have a bit of faith that it is possible to 'win' and keep trying new/different things.
The satisfaction of solving a problem is directly related to the difficulty of said problem after all.
However. Early Alpha 17 experimental would have seriously pissed me off had that been my first time playing 7dtd.
If you listen to @Ralathar44s commentary in the first vid he linked, and take in how much effort went into that base, for just the first horde night(!), it will give you an idea that actually TFPs have really toned down the early hordes in a18 and, it appears, even a bit more in a19.
A comparison a19exp vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi-vt5j0Yv8
I built a base very similar to the third one shown in the vid in early a17 experimental, but it also had a huge wooden spike field under it. It didn't last long. In PriMates vid the a19 zeds barely touch the poles. I was quite suprised as the AI did/is-supposed-to(?) get pissed if there isn't a path and start taking out supports.
So view it as a challenge, one that you -can- overcome, put the ole noggin in gear and get to work.