Just a note - TFP have stated that their intent is not to balance the game at harder difficulties. Their intent is for the game to be balanced at the default difficulty setting.
I don't fully understand this, because what actually changes at higher difficulty compared to lower?
Is it mostly about managing stamina, and zombie "rage" speed bonus?
For example, if a zombie can be killed in 3 hits on standard difficulty, and you have enough stamina to dish out 3 hits in a row... If the difficulty is higher (zombies take 6 hits to kill now), suddenly you need to manage your stamina. Not only does it require you to regenerate stamina for those extra 3 attacks, but also you need to reposition yourself and likely sprint away to avoid harm. So you're spending stamina for mobility, as well as for dealing damage.
If the implication is that "standard gameplay" doesn't require you to do this, then why do zombies have a "rage bonus" at all?
The only real difference between the lowest difficulty setting and the highest, is the question of "do I have enough stamina, mobility, and time". On low difficulties, you almost never have to ask yourself that question, but on higher difficulties you do.
On lower difficulties, if you see a zombie bear / dire wolf / cougar, all you have to ask yourself is "do I have a ranged weapon? do I have ammo? do I want to get the loot that animal has?".
On higher difficulties, in the same situation, you also have to ask "will that thing die before it reaches me if I start shooting it from here? can I kill it without needing to reload? am I able to outrun it, or tank hits from it, if it reaches me? does my gun have enough durability? do I have a backup weapon to switch to? will I be able to harvest it before too many more zombies show up?".
There is a gameplay difference between the difficulty settings, sure. Even though very little mechanically changes, it's that added element of "what can I do to avoid taking damage?". But how is the game being balanced for a particular difficulty setting?
Ok, so hypothetically we're playing on a low difficulty setting, with low gamestage, just taking it easy and just picking off stray zombies during the day. They're slow, we're probably one-shotting them, they're spread out in most cases, sometimes you'll find a juicy pack of them and be like "ooh, easy exp". Cool.
So yes, obviously a gun, bow, or any projectile weapon is going to be able to "harvest the exp" from further away, so you don't have to move as far.
After those weapons, when we get down to melee, yes, technically the spear can "harvest the exp" from 3.6 meters instead of 2-2.6 meters of the other melee weapons.
But normal gameplay isn't that.
In normal gameplay, you're going in POIs (houses and other buildings, generally), and sometimes you follow the path the POI directs you along, sometimes you mine or build to avoid an obstacle. In these POIs, a lot of them put the player into situations where you're getting ambushed in confined spaces. This is pretty clearly intentional, based on their design. They want you to get jumped in that little room, and if you know the POI you can feel smart by preparing specifically to avoid that potentially unfavorable situation.
So if it's possible to "not get boxed in and trapped", and it's also possible that "yes you actually did get boxed in and trapped and the zombies are closing in on you with the intention of becoming very close friends", and the game is designed so you can learn the layout of each POI and be rewarded for having tricks and foreknowledge to overcome obstacles in there...
Then when you do get boxed in, or when you choose to take the fight directly to the zombies (so they're the ones trapped in that room with you), then your choice of weapons, armour, skill build, and what you had for lunch, all suddenly matter.
If a player is in a melee fight, having a weapon that has a big "glancing blow" area, and those "glancing blows" can stagger or knock-down or face decap, that is a pretty big advantage over a weapon with a smaller hit area, with lower stagger and knock-down chance.
So what actually happens in a melee fight against a zombie, or a group of zombies?
Well, you get within your comfortable range, within your preferred timing, and you launch an attack at the zombie. This either means before the zombie swings, or after it's started a swing (that you've hopefully avoided being hit by).
Then the zombie reacts to being hit by you (provided you hit it). It will either die in one hit. Or it will become knocked-down or stunned. Or it will flinch. Or it will not react and will continue trying to come closer and hit you.
In the case that it flinches towards you, or just generally keeps coming closer, and especially if it becomes more enraged, it might hit you. The tricky part about this is, you dealing damage to the zombie can actually help it to land a hit on you.
But if you knock-down or stun the zombie, that generally will not assist it in hitting you. It'll break-even at worst.
So, defensively, knocking-down or stunning a zombie is better than not being able to do that.
But not all weapons have an equal chance of knocking-down or stunning zombies. So what do they do instead?
Sledge has good reach (2.6 on both attacks), with a wide arc swing for the power attack. It has a really good knock-down chance (listed at 75%), which can affect multiple enemies per swing, and its big damage assists it with one-shotting. Its downsides being, high stamina costs and slow speed.
Club is basically a mini-sledge, with a different "feel". Shorter range, less damage-per-hit, faster attack speed.
Pipe Baton is essentially a Club in a lot of ways.
Stun Baton combines elements from a few weapons, essentially. AoE knock-downs (from Sledge), generalist stats (from Club), damage-over-time effect (from Knife), and just makes it quirky by visually letting you know when your next hit is guaranteed to apply effects. The 10% chance of insta-kill is uniquely effective in higher difficulty.
Knuckles are like a mini-Club, with an even different "feel". Shorter range, faster attack speed, weird relationship to damage (they have their own Beer buff dedicated to them). Also weird is they are the only weapon to heal you.
Knife is a tool/weapon hybrid. Can't beat a bone knife for harvesting crops as a farmer.
Instead of being a "mini-" any of the other weapons, the knife has a mix of weird elements all on its own. Fastest attack speed light attack, paired with a half-speed power attack (no other weapon does that?). Huge sneak damage boost. Huge damage-to-stamina ratio on the bone knife (double as high as all of the others). Then there's the bleed, a core part of the knife. The bleed stacks up, and when the skill is leveled-up, this bleed can provide a slowing effect *to all targets*.
The spear, in its own right, is a hybrid of weird things. It's got the highest melee range, but only on the power attack. It can penetrate multiple enemies if they line up (or put dents in the sand under your target). Then it can also ignore some of the target's armour. It does have a slow, but that slow only affects humanoids (so all animals ignore it).
The axe (iron / steel) is the pseudo 7th melee weapon category, and basically offers nothing over the "real" 6 categories.
Weapon choice generally comes down to 3 things: What fantasy the player wants to fulfil, what gameplay advantages the weapon offers, and sometimes just what weapon they looted first. Obviously we can't account for the third thing, so let's look at the first two, starting with "advantages the weapon offers".
So, what makes the most sense as a "new player" weapon? Club. It's a good all-rounder with no weaknesses.
Okay, but what about when you're more experienced, and want something for a specific purpose/playstyle?
Bone Knife in the early game is excellent at conserving stamina. Really unmatched if you're trying to get early kills just so you can put food in your mouth.
Knuckles uniquely and unapologetically put you "in the face" of the zombies. Higher chance of getting hit, but higher chance of not caring about it.
Sledge is very defensive (and offensive) in all stages of the game, on all difficulties. Can't beat its per-hit damage or knock-down chance, and it has the 2nd-highest range.
Stun Baton is unrivalled in all aspects of the game, but only once you're fully geared and built for it. Until then, it's just a mini-Sledge.
Machete has an excellently gory dismember chance, so you can get up close and separate zombies.
Spear has the longest range, so you can poke from further away. Easier time stabbing through door gaps, or down onto heads.
Moving on to fantasy: It's just vibes, but what can take you out of the good vibes is bad audio/visual depiction, or bad game balance. Let's dive a little deeper into the fantasy before we get to the balance issues.
Sledge: It is the #1 best for being a "defender", from start to finish. If you're playing with a friend who "sucks" at the game, and they don't know how to kite, when to run, or any of that, and they find themselves constantly getting swarmed when you turn your back... The sledgehammer is an excellent weapon category. The high knockdown chance means you can "peel" zombies off of your goofy ally better than any other weapons (except maybe the Stun Baton).
Sledge (part two): It is the #1 highest damage-per-hit weapon, so if you want to have a "big strong hulk smash" vibe, the sledgehammer is also for you. It covers two fantasies. Head-bonking a feral into a sweet ragdoll with a single swing is quite obtainable with a steel sledge.
Stun Baton: If you're the type to meticulously plan out your build and get a sweet payoff with calculated (but very intense) mid-combat power-spikes that let you face absolutely any challenge in front of you, the Stun Baton is unbeaten. It will crush absolutely anything in front of it better than any other melee weapon can (as long as you're willing to put up with its RNG aspect). You'll want to be tanky when the RNG isn't in your favor.
Knuckles: Similar fantasy to the Stun Baton, but in some ways the opposite. Instead of planning out your build meticulously, and carefully considering each swing's electricity content, you instead just buy beer, grow hops, and punch things in the head. This is the berserker vibe weapon. Don't think just punch.
Machete: I'd consider Stun Baton, Knuckles, and Machete to be a trio of sibling weapon fantasies. They all involve wading into hordes of zombies and just getting messy (or at least giving you the ability to). You could wade into hordes with the Sledge, but the attack speed is just too slow for that. The machete lets you be the butcher. It's kind of like a different berserker vibe. Instead of punching, you're chopping, dismembering. Maybe you just love being covered in blood?
Club: Realism? Pragmatism? I don't know if there is a particular fantasy to the clubs. Maybe if you're channeling the vibes of a particular piece of media?
Spear: ???
So what's wrong here? The club, being the ultimate generalist weapon, can't really have an extreme vibe to it. It's not excellent or awful at anything. That's understandable, but where did the spear go wrong?
Let's look at spears in media, history, games, and just "take a stab" at what the fantasy could be with spears.
The spear, for a very long time in history, alongside the bow & arrow, was "the weapon". It's been proven to be extremely effective against all animals and humans alike. Just on a surface level, the spear is the single coolest weapon in 7 Days To Die. So what went wrong within the game?
Well, there isn't one type of spear in real life, or in media. But in 7dtd, there's just one spear category. A "boar spear", a "dory spear", a "pike", an "assegai spear", and whatever else types of spear are fundamentally different. There are countless types of spear and spear-like polearms to draw inspiration from, but in the game there's just "spear" that comes in 3 tiers, but is functionally the same.
If 7dtd added a "boar spear", it could be a really cool thing for your stabs to slightly push back zombies (or at least never causing them to stumble forward). The whole point of that genre of spear was to prevent animals from running up the shaft after being impaled. No such thing exists in 7dtd though.
If 7dtd didn't remove the throw, having a thrown spear could be a cool thing, letting you choose between using it for melee, or throwing it into your target, (hopefully) temporarily disarming you in the process. Spear throwing is a fun aspect, and it's a shame they chose to remove that.
If 7dtd had a dedicated longer spear (maybe not a pike, but just a generally long spear, up to 3 meters?), you could have that big reach, and focus on making use of it. (No, the current spear isn't "this" currently.)
If 7dtd had a specialized anti-armour spear, that specifically had bonuses to ignoring armour, that would also be cool.
But it feels like what 7dtd has done, is just slap some spear-type features into one single spear category, and called it a day. There's no real cohesion or through-line about what fantasy the spear is trying to fulfil in this game. What, you're supposed to sit behind a barrier and skewer zombies during blood moon? That's the vibe? If that was how it's supposed to be used, then why does it have a slow on it? The slow doesn't help when you're behind a barrier. But if it's supposed to be used out in the open by using mobility and slows, then why doesn't it affect animals? And how is it a bladed weapon that doesn't apply bleed, while the knifes and machete apply bleeds? How does that make sense?
The other weapons have visual and mechanical vibes to them.
Why does the spear partially ignore armour? Is that a nod to realism? If it is, why doesn't the pickaxe have armour ignore?
Is it for gameplay reasons? What, so you can fight demolishers better while you're camping in your base?
The spear should be **the** anti-animal melee weapon. Yet due to its mechanics it is uniquely unspecialized for animals.
The sledge, club, stun baton, knuckles all knock-down and/or stun animals, which helps defensively.
The knife can slow animals, and is good for cutting them up.
Yet the spear has nothing.
A spear is fundamentally a long stick with a sharp end. There are so many realistic ways you could buff it.
Give it a mobility boost, because you can hold it in both hands and run around without the weight throwing you off-balance or needing to worry about the blade cutting you. Make attacks cost less stamina because it's a bladed weapon, so it should be a force multiplier; it should be easier to swing than a club while dealing more damage. Give it the bleed effect of knives, because it's a knife on a stick. Allow its slow to apply to animals, because why does the knife's slow apply to animals but not the spear's?
The spear won't ever have the raw knock-down defensive power of the sledge / club / baton / knuckles. And it shouldn't. But it needs something to balance it with the other melee weapons.
Heck, just split it into two weapons.
One spear can be the anti-armour, penetrating spike. It can ignore armour, penetrate multiple enemies, and can be designed for camping on horde night.
The other spear can be the bladed spear. It can apply bleeds, slow enemies, and give a mobility boost, designed for kiting in open spaces.
At least that way both weapons would have distinct identities and fantasies. Instead of the jank spear we currently have.
