PC Well ... that escalated quickly!

[Jenshae]

Wow, okay. So all the people struggling with horde nights thinking of modding things like demos out could easily just lower the number to what feels right for them can do so? That's probably what I would do...��

=================

OP:

Day 29 after the 4th horde.

Day 36 after the 5th horde.

We went from a pretty regular horde on Day 28, with some cops to 90% radioactives + cops + demolition zombies on Day 35.

Hordes 1, 2, 3 and 4 all progressed in increasing difficulty, such that we could build, improve and cope with what was coming.

I don't know what triggered such a huge leap in horde difficulty but there is no way that we could have prepared for that without using creative mode, cheats and or server mods.

We were role focused, I have some agility for hunting, loads of intelligence for crafting.

My friend is strength with mining and does the upgrading.

Another of us does houses, looting and has skills to talk with traders.

We all have 4-5/5 skills in looting.

We hadn't even unlocked electricity yet. Loot tables were against us.

We have the odd QL6 item that we found, some blues but mostly we are on yellows and greens. Mixed armour, different weapons to split out the ammo types.

We simply can't find enough food, produce enough resources, defend the base from screamers and upgrade fast enough to build against such a jump in difficulty.

As a result, I will be waiting with the /killall command to see what happens in the next horde and I have resorted to cheating the base back in to what it was at least.

--------------------------

Testing the next horde

--------------------------

So, I cheated in a base.
Day 42

Me

Level: 54

Game Stage: 159

Friend

Level: 48

Game Stage: 153

Deduct the 4-5 levels we gained this night.

We beat the horde but it has two cheats:

1) Down the East and West side there are arrow slits that the zombies don't want to walk over.

2) On the South and North side there are "infinite bridges" where the zombies can't cross the steep slopes and keep climbing.

(I would have survived the night if my friend hadn't mistaken me for a zombie and shot me when I was out on the bridge trying to reload the turrets.)

Further, we made some game setting changes:

1) Blood Moon zombies only Jog (ferals still run at Nightmare speeds)

2) Zombie block damage was down to 50%

We barely made it through the night, as you can see from the second image, the bridge was nearing collapse and they would have started super bashing the core of the base after that.

At this point in our game progression, this game stage, unless from Day 1 we were building toward this exact base, knowing the cheats and developing this, I am not even sure we could have built it well enough to survive this horde.

I think the (horde <--> game stage) progression curve is too steep.

===================

I agree that the zombie AI could be better, the zombie abilities more interesting and that zombie AI + further optimisation is probably what the game needs the most.

===================

That part of it never really bothered me. I would be fine with the max 64 alive. The limitations are real, and I accept that... but they should too. There are a few special zombies, but the vast majority of them are the same. They attack your base the same.Ideally, I would want a variety of attacking and a variety of possible defenses that focus on those. I have hard time explaining these thoughts so maybe listing all the things will help describe the kind of TD I would expect from the game...

I wish...

- that turrets had settings that prioritize targets within range (choose from closest, furthest, weakest strongest)

- to place 9mm turrets to handle bunches of fast but weak zombies.

- for a turret or weapon that might not damage zombies much, but disperses them as crowd control to handle the group zombie damage bonus they get.

- for another turret that is a step up from the one above that does the damage as well with a very slow rate of fire and requires some thought for the prefect placement.

- for ranged defenses to help take out the zombies with ranged attacks (the spitters) also slow rate of fire, requires nice placement.

- for some zombies to climb walls... and not just because that's the shortest path. They might decide to take an alternative route to the roof and then smash down to get me.

- for defenses to prevent said wall crawlers from doing that.

- for a trap that dismembers again.

- for spider zombies to have an attack while in the air.

- for blocks that make it hard for zombies to jump off of.

- for blocks that are good at explosion defense, but weak for direct zombie attacks.

- for blocks that are good at zombie attacks, but weak for explosions.

- for some zombies to fit through 1 meter holes.

- for demolishers to be super slow (it's only fair for the damage they do) so you have a chance to at least snipe them.

- that I could shoot the demolisher's button twice for an instant explosion

- that blade traps could be placed to safely hit a demolisher's head again

- for zombies to try something else and not loop

- for an advanced barbed wire that also causes bleed

- that the mines had noticeable radius differences

- that each of the not-so-special had different tower-attacking behavior, forcing me to place all mentioned defenses in strategic ways. Perhaps one tends to always attack supports, another is bothered by the turrets and targets them, another targets traps, another always wants shortest path to player.

- for at least one zombie immune to electric fence, but weak against other things

- for some zombies to be especially good at withstanding explosives, but weak against other things

- for survival reward that matches the upkeep

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

eeewwwww screen is modded gross. lol :fat:

 

[Jenshae]

eeewwwww screen is modded gross. lol :fat:

Pfft. Temperature and food levels are too annoying with vanilla HUD.

 

[FSHerrante]

The hordes are really massives now, you need a filter to prevent your base demolition, find info about vertical semi ramps contention perimeter.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

The hordes are really massives now, you need a filter to prevent your base demolition, find info about vertical semi ramps contention perimeter.

Spoiler

Sounds to me like we got ourselves a cheater here boys.

Spoiler

Your kind aint welcome here round these parts..

Spoiler

Grab them pitch forks and torches! We got us a runner!

Spoiler

:cocksure:

 

[Liesel Weppen]

We simply can't find enough food, produce enough resources, defend the base from screamers and upgrade fast enough to build against such a jump in difficulty.

We are playing allmost the same style on our server with (most regularily) 4 players, regarding to role focus.

One is our miner and crafter

One is our trader

One is our damage dealer/tank/looter (besides we usually loot alltogether)

And i am our farmer...

(+ we all specialised to different weapon sets)

The last one is the point in your food problem. Build plots, plant your own plants, make food yourself and the problem is gone. One should invest in living of the land and masterchef.

I assume after your 4th horde one of you repaired the base, which earns him a ♥♥♥♥load of XP. Maybe the miner mined for ressources, too. They may have gotten some levelups which could have increased your gamestage a lot. That might explain the sudden rise in BM difficulty.

And go for (reinforced) concrete. If you can not craft enough ressources for that, build smaller bases. Our base "core" is about 1/4 the size of yours (with the main base undergound below it). Your overall base size seems similar to our "outer defense layer".

Multiplayer in A18 seems a lot more different to A18 singleplayer. The lack of food, the enourmous XP income and therefore heavier blood moons. Reading from singleplayer guys they see their first ferral on 4th BM, we already had the first Demolitioner there.

We had a small defense base like yours (but smaller) on 2nd horde. For the 3rd horde we already upgraded the most important walls to (reinforced) concrete. Which got heavily damaged in 3rd BM anyway. We couldn't finish the "tower defense" system for 4th BM in time. So our 4th BM was a run & gun one, 2 players kited the Zs around the unfinshed base while the other 2 shot them from small pillars.

After that we increased our crafting stuff (5-6 furnaces, 3 concrete mixers, 3 workbenches for mostly ammo crafting, almost all running 24/7).

The following BMs then went well with the base finished (at least the current state, but still improving). We now have 8th or 9th BM incoming.

* we know the ramp trick, to trick the AI but we decided not to (ab)use it that way, because that in our opinion kills the fun

** we set BM to 7/3, so bloodmoon might happen a few days later, to occasionally have more time in between BMs. We are now day 70. On day 69 a BM could have happened, but didn't. So with this setting after 70 days we now skipped one BM.

Pfft. Temperature and food levels are too annoying with vanilla HUD.

We used such mods until A17. But since you can now see your food level with your stamina it is not needed anymore.

 

[Jenshae]

So our 4th BM was a run & gun one, 2 players kited the Zs around the unfinshed base while the other 2 shot them from small pillars.

Yeah, we are kind of looking at this and going ... "Well we could build a base ... or we could just get on our motorbikes and drive all night."

Getting oil is easier than trying to make a base that can keep away those zombies.

 

[Fox]

Where was your defenses? How the hell did you last that long with only 1 row of barbed wire?

I generally go with 7 rows of spikes within the first 7 days and upgrade them to metal over time and 3+ rows of barbed wire... all this around as small of a base as possible to save on resources and a ramped / long jump entry to the base since most zombies still haven't figured out how to jump properly yet (and if/when they do, I have other solutions to that as well). I also add blade traps and electric fences later as I level up just for the hell of it. To this day, I've never lost a battle on horde night, even while on hardest difficulty settings, though I haven't played with those settings in a while cuz bullet sponge zombies completely ruin the game.

 

[Jenshae]

Now it looks good but it is made out of paper. :tickled_pink:

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Yeah, we are kind of looking at this and going ... "Well we could build a base ... or we could just get on our motorbikes and drive all night."

But we did not just run away, we still used the base (although not in the way it was intended to) and killed the zombies.

Sure you can jump on your minibike and just drive away, or you build the ramp trick and let the Zs run circles, or you can stop playing 7dtd.

Besids if you plan to avoid the bloodmoon and just loot and build, you can turn of bloodmoon in the config entirely.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Where was your defenses? How the hell did you last that long with only 1 row of barbed wire?
I generally go with 7 rows of spikes within the first 7 days and upgrade them to metal over time and 3+ rows of barbed wire... all this around as small of a base as possible to save on resources and a ramped / long jump entry to the base since most zombies still haven't figured out how to jump properly yet (and if/when they do, I have other solutions to that as well). I also add blade traps and electric fences later as I level up just for the hell of it. To this day, I've never lost a battle on horde night, even while on hardest difficulty settings, though I haven't played with those settings in a while cuz bullet sponge zombies completely ruin the game.

Playing on all default except diffculty the first 4 hordes can be done with a simple 3x3 tower with 2 rows of spikes and one of barbed wire. No problem at all. I even had reinforced concrete with iron bars on day 7. Didn´t even have a workbench or a cementmixer myself, only using the stuff lying around (Cobblestone and cement is waaaay to common) and the 2 mixers i had within a few hundred meters in POI`s...

 

[Jenshae]

But we did not just run away, we still used the base (although not in the way it was intended to) and killed the zombies. Sure you can jump on your minibike and just drive away, or you build the ramp trick and let the Zs run circles, or you can stop playing 7dtd.

Besids if you plan to avoid the bloodmoon and just loot and build, you can turn of bloodmoon in the config entirely.

On another server, we were overwhelmed using the arrow slit exploit. One of the group cycled in circles and we just picked zombies off one by one. That was just Day 7.

The main thing is: the sudden and massive jump in difficulty.
We rebuild ... do okay ... invest more time ... and can we trust that it won't do another massive jump up again?

 

[Liesel Weppen]

We rebuild ... do okay ... invest more time ... and can we trust that it won't do another massive jump up again?

As i said above: Keep track on how many levelups each of you gets and track your gamestage.

There ist no random jump in difficulty, it all depends on your gamestage.

From another thread here:

Gamestage is calculated in Multiplayer for the 5 players with the highest gamestage (if there are more then 5 players, they are not taken into account). GS1 is the gamestage of the player with the highest player:

GS1 + GS2 * 0.8 + GS3 * 0.6 + GS4 * 0.4 + GS5 * 0.2

The gamestage per player is as follows:

(serverDays - (playerDeaths * 2)) * difficulty level

serverDays is also capped by the players level.

So if a player is level 45 on day 70 on the server with 9 deaths with diffulty 2 it is:

(45 - (9 * 2)) * 2 = 54

if a player is level 90 on day 70 on the server with 9 deaths with diffulty 2 it is:

(70 - (9 * 2)) * 2 = 104

So if you level fast and your level even might overtake the serverDays and nobody dies in a short time, this will cause a huge jump in Gamestage.

We are way below the serverDays (day 70, all players between level 40-50 and > 10 deaths), so we could still do a massive jump in difficulty just by leveling up.

You can lookup the XML files or probably find a list somewhere here in the forum which overall gamestage might spawn what type of Zombies.

So for example, the gamestage has to be above 80 to make radiates occur, above 100 to get radiated ferrals, above 120 to get demolitioners (just as an example, those are not the values used by the game).

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Since when did the amount of days that passed on a server ever become part of it??? and proof please

- - - Updated - - -

There is a metric which maps a player or group of players to a game stage number.

daysSurvived:

This is a running total, kept for every individual player.

Every 24 hours GAME time 1 (day) is added.

On every death "daysAliveChangeWhenKilled" is subtracted from the total.

After this the daysAlive is capped.

It is low-capped at 0, high-capped at "your player level".

At player level 41 you can have a daysSurvived value anywhere from 0 to 41.

gameStage = ( playerLevel + daysSurvived ) * gameDifficultyMultiplier

So if a player was level 10 and survived 4 days playing on the Nomad Difficulty when the game stage points are calculated the game stage points would be

gameStage = (Player Level 10 + Days Survived 4 ) X Nomad Difficulty Multiplier 1.2

The total would be 16.8 or 16 game stage points.

If the same player was level 10 and had survived 25 days and died 2x:

25 days - 2 x 2 (daysAliveChangeWhenKilled) = 21

Then daysAlive of 21 gets capped to player level so 10.

This is how the gamestage of a party is calculated:

The gamestage of all (up to) 6 players is calculated.

The players are sorted by gamestage and only the 5 highest numbers go into the calculation.

The highest GS number is multiplied by "startingWeight".

This then loops down the list and "startingWeight" is reduced by "diminishingReturns" every time.

Example:

Players with GS 120, 30, 60, 91, 5, 80.

startingWeight= 1.7, diminishingReturns=0.22

So we get

120 * 1.70 = 204

91 * 1.48 = 134

80 * 1.26 = 100

60 * 1.04 = 62

30 * 0.82 = 24

5 (is ignored)

... or a total party GS of 524

An interesting fact is that the max GS of a part or player is now KNOWN because the player level (which caps daysAlive) and diff modifier are known

and the party weight factors are known.

With default values you get up to 600 for a single lvl 150 (max) player on max difficulty and for a full party of max level players up to 1800.

- - - - - - -

Which gameStage list of spawn groups is actually picked and "ran" if it calculates a GS of 15?

It rounds down.

At a GS of 15 the <gamestage stage="14"> is used.

At a GS of 14 <gamestage stage="12"> is used.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Since when did the amount of days that passed on a server ever become part of it??? and proof please

Another thread here in this forum i just read some days ago.

And since it is playerlevel capped anyway, it doesn't matter much. If a new player with level 1 joins on serverday 2879, his gamestage is still 1.

daysSurvived:

This is a running total, kept for every individual player.

Every 24 hours GAME time 1 (day) is added.

On every death "daysAliveChangeWhenKilled" is subtracted from the total.

After this the daysAlive is capped.

It is low-capped at 0, high-capped at "your player level".

At player level 41 you can have a daysSurvived value anywhere from 0 to 41.

gameStage = ( playerLevel + daysSurvived ) * gameDifficultyMultiplier

Proof please layful:

But anyway, it doesn't matter if your algorithm is correct or mine in A18.

The key is which Zs the bloodmoon throws on you depends on this value. And no matter how exactly this value is calculated you can see each players gamestage in the party menu.

 

[Jenshae]

Is the (horde <--> game stage) levels right?

Was the horde we had on Day 35 perhaps something we should have had on (current game stage +50%) instead?

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Was the horde we had on Day 35 perhaps something we should have had on (current game stage +50%) instead?

No, or you found a bug.

Edit: Or the server admin changed the difficulty setting without letting you know.

 

[Orclover]

You are not done seeing jumps in difficulty I am afraid, and it gets worse.

We are at a combined gamestage of ~350ish during our bloodmoons, possibly much higher. Standard settings, 8 zeds per player and cap of 60 zeds spawned at a time. Bloodmoons are just about rediclous. We have stopped building bases and just use modified POI's. It would take 2 or 3 weeks in game time to repair the damage to our "built from scratch" super concrete base, it is just not worth it.

Bloodmoons consist mostly glowing zeds, maybe 1 or 2 ferals/normals for color. Every wave has a glowing cop zed or two. 2-4 demoltionist are spawned every minute or so after 2am. Vultures are upgraded and spit acid. Dogs are laughably ignored for the most part so we can focus on the bullet sponge hulky glowies. Strangely we no longer need looping ramps since they almost never make it to the top of the long staircase before dying/falling off but its a moot point regardless because when the demo' show up it is only a matter of time before they blow up the staircase. We have resorted to using multiple staircases now but they usually only last a minute or two before they get blown to smithereens as well. When the last staircase is blown up there is nothing for us to do but twiddle our thumbs until morning and then clear them out. Hoping that they do not completely destroy the poi while we wait. Last horde night we lasted until about 2:45 am before the third and final staircase was destroyed and we broke out the card decks till morning. We didnt even run out of ammo. We are pretty close to just removing the demos from the game at this point, those this are just stupidly OP and serve no purpose in making the game more fun. We will happily replace them with glowing cop zeds. They are too tough, too fast and destroy everything in the area around them. Worse however is the chain reaction from them blowing up detonating all the other demo's in the area. Kiss every block within 10 squares of them bunched up goodbye.

For those of you who can wipe out 100 of them a night with fail-less head shots until morning, good for you, here's a sticker now run along.



For the rest of us they are just annoying base wreckers we have to circumvent somehow. I have yet to find a filter that actually works for them in multiplayer.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Another thread here in this forum i just read some days ago. And since it is playerlevel capped anyway, it doesn't matter much. If a new player with level 1 joins on serverday 2879, his gamestage is still 1.

Proof please layful:

But anyway, it doesn't matter if your algorithm is correct or mine in A18.

The key is which Zs the bloodmoon throws on you depends on this value. And no matter how exactly this value is calculated you can see each players gamestage in the party menu.

Where is my proof already!! lol just joking. What I posted was just copied and pasted from the XML that governs gamestage and stuff. If I dared try and do the math I would wreck it all and put out so much false info lol.

 

[Orclover]

The key is which Zs the bloodmoon throws on you depends on this value. And no matter how exactly this value is calculated you can see each players gamestage in the party menu.

Whats worse is how it calculates group game stage when you party up. Individually on blood moons I can handle the whole night by myself, even killing the lone Demo's that show up because I can headshot 1 of them over and over from a group of 8 when the rest are just ferals and glowies. But my server groups up when we all happen to be on and suddenly our gamestage gets a bit rediculous. Our group cant handle ~4+ demo's in a field of 16-24 zeds, almost all glowing, lots of cops and snotball launching vultures making things worse for long before one or more of those demo's detonates. Once they start detonating then horde night is all but over.

The weird thing is how easy horde night is to jut "ditch" now. I'm not talking bout walking out and letting them eat you to get a night off. I'm talking about just riding to some distant POI, wait for the horde to spawn and rush up. You get on your hog and simply ride off a few KM's. Once you are out of their spawn range...THEY JUST STAY THERE! You can ride home and just chill, or go somewhere and do some mining. Anybody else see this on their servers? As long as you don't go back and get them to chase you again you can just kinda ditch em. I'm assuming the server just keeps them in que there in that area with no player to chase and waits for somebody to come by. Since the horde has been spawned and not killed then they just sit there rather than respawning as a new horde wherever you are like in the old days (where they would chase you all night). It makes taking the night off real easy but its just so cheesy.