PC WTB more info on "game stage" mechanic

G

Gizmodio

New member
Yo!

I'm about to rent a dedicated server for me and all my friends that wants to play.

But that made me wonder about the game stage mechanic

I know for a fact I will end up playing alot more then some of my friends, so naturally i will be higher level and have a higher game stage rating.

Does anyone know exactly how this effects gameplay for everyone ?

Say if i'm in my base building away, i'm level 50 with a GS of 100

500m away one of my friends are trying to loot a town, they are lvl 10 with a GS of 20

Would my GS effect the zombies in the POI they are trying to loot even if i'm far away ?

What is the range where the game combines GS and assumes we play together ?

Or do you need to be allies in game, and also be in a party ?

Any info would be awesome, thanks :)

 
gamestage = (your level + days alive) x difficulty multiplier

Notes:

days alive is capped by your level

days alive = server day - (2 x number of times you've died)

multiplier = 1.0 for Scavenger difficulty, rising to 2.5 for Insane

Multiplayer Scaling

Counts everyone you are partied with, no matter how far away

Uses top 5 gamestages of the group and sorts them, then scales as follows (GS1 is highest gamestage, GS5 is lowest)...

GS1 + (0.8 x GS2) + (0.6 x GS3) + (0.4 x GS4) + (0.2 x GS5)

How it works: Whenever anyone in your party comes in range of "spawner" (which is either a POI type or the bloodmoon) the spawner's zombies are calculated based on the group's scaled GS - so yes your friend in your party who is 1km away entering a POI is affected by your GS - both the loot he gets and the zombies he faces. Don't forget that GS also affects loot tables!! Every spawner has its own zombie table based on the group GS at time of spawn. Finally, people joining or leaving your group has no effect once a spawner has spawned its zombies. I'm guessing but it seems logical that a POI spawner keeps whatever it spawned until its chunk is unloaded. I have no idea how respawns work in this regard.

Interestingly, if we assume each player is level 300 (which is max) and has days alive at 300, we can calculate the maximum gamestages possible:

On Insane

Solo: 1500

MP: 2 players: 2700

MP: 5 players or more: 4500

Of course level 300 is almost impossible with the current XP model, and only an idiot plays on Insane. So let's work it all out for level 100 and Nomad (middle) difficulty whose multiplier is 1.5:

Solo: 300

MP: 2 players: 540

MP: 5 players or more: 900

Finally, there is one other little thing that's super-relevant. Those spawners I mentioned above have caps. By this I mean that after a certain GS, they don't get any harder as their zombie encounter table has no more rows beyond a certain GS. So you are seeing the toughest zombie sets you are going to see for those spawners. The most relevant ones are:

Most POIs: 800

Wandering Hordes: 800

Blood Moon: 4086

Note there are number of entries in the gamestage tables that I have no idea what they refer to. :/

So next time you are about to declare the game too easy, check your gamestage and see where you are in the grand scheme of things. To do this, enter the console by pressing F1, then type 'gamestage'.

 
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I thought I should add...

How does GS actually affect the zombies you encounter in a POI or Bloodmoon? I am not 100% on this but I believe the GS directly affects the number of zombies, then the ZombieGroupType defined in other XML tables defines the type of the spawned zombies. This is always RNG based, so a zombie group is defined as the set of chances of each spawned zombie being of a certain type. E.g 20% to be a Demolisher, 10% to be a Spider, 30% chance to be a Soldier and so on.

Higher GS gives a higher total zombie count and higher chance of the nastier zombie types being encountered.

 
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So next time you are about to declare the game too easy, check your gamestage and see where you are in the grand scheme of things. To do this, enter the console by pressing F1, then type 'gamestage'.
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I don't have the game open right now, but I think you can see your game stage on the screen that lists all the players on the server with their levels. At least that is where I saw mine in single player.

 
days alive = server day - (2 x number of times you've died)
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What? That's just "server day limited by level" whenever you join a server a bit later.. I mean as little as a week later. If you die, it's reduced by two days. Which is still just your level ..? How is that "days alive"? :)
 
How is that "days alive"? :)
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It is not how many days you current live is in a row, it is how many days you have been alive on this server over the whole game runtime... not just the value inbetween two deaths.

You die on day 7, so day seven is not counted as one day lived. So on day 12 your current livetime is only 5 days, but you have been alive on the whole world for 11 days. But to make deaths more weighted it gives you two days "not alive" per death, so "days alive" would then be 10. So you can even stack it up. If you die 5 times on day seven your "days alive" will be 0 (or maybe even -3).

And i think it's the "server day" instead of "the day when you first joined the game" because of simplicity.

 
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And i think it's the "server day" instead of "the day when you first joined the game" because of simplicity.
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which would also be why the days alive is capped at your level. So a level 1 player joining a day 200 game would have a gamestage of 2 X multiplier instead of 201 X multiplier

 
Yo!
I'm about to rent a dedicated server for me and all my friends that wants to play.

But that made me wonder about the game stage mechanic

I know for a fact I will end up playing alot more then some of my friends, so naturally i will be higher level and have a higher game stage rating.

Does anyone know exactly how this effects gameplay for everyone ?

Say if i'm in my base building away, i'm level 50 with a GS of 100

500m away one of my friends are trying to loot a town, they are lvl 10 with a GS of 20

Would my GS effect the zombies in the POI they are trying to loot even if i'm far away ?

What is the range where the game combines GS and assumes we play together ?

Or do you need to be allies in game, and also be in a party ?

Any info would be awesome, thanks :)
Click to expand...
So yeah, your friends would be kind of screwed if they were in a party with you.

 
Thanks for the explanations, I do get what you are saying, however .. eh :)

Even with "actual" gametime, as in something like "Time_played_on_server / server_day_length"; when limited by level, unless you level more than once a day it'll just be = level. Level x 2 for the formula.

If you die a lot, you can drop the "days played - deathsX2" below your level, but that doesn't sound like it would be significant - each death would remove "2 times the multiplier" from your gamestage, as in, something between two and five? For a number that gets interesting at ~140 taking out 3 isn't exactly going to rock my world. With MP it'll get another 1.8 multi, so up to 9 GS reduction per death on insane.

You'd need to die a lot for that to make a dent? I don't mind, I'm just surprised at the math, effects of deaths seem quite weak here. I should prolly plot this stuff before making claims though, intuitive maths are never a good idea .. :)

 
It is not how many days you current live is in a row, it is how many days you have been alive on this server over the whole game runtime... not just the value inbetween two deaths.
You die on day 7, so day seven is not counted as one day lived. So on day 12 your current livetime is only 5 days, but you have been alive on the whole world for 11 days. But to make deaths more weighted it gives you two days "not alive" per death, so "days alive" would then be 10. So you can even stack it up. If you die 5 times on day seven your "days alive" will be 0 (or maybe even -3).
Click to expand...
It's min-capped at 0, so you can't go negative with it.

 
How it works: Whenever anyone in your party comes in range of "spawner" (which is either a POI type or the bloodmoon) the zombies are calculated based on the group's scaled GS - so yes your friend in your party who is 1km away entering a POI is affected by your GS - both the loot he gets and the zombies he faces. Don't forget that GS also affects loot tables!!
Click to expand...
Thanks! thats the info I was after :)

 
Thanks for the explanations, I do get what you are saying, however .. eh :)
Even with "actual" gametime, as in something like "Time_played_on_server / server_day_length"; when limited by level, unless you level more than once a day it'll just be = level. Level x 2 for the formula.

If you die a lot, you can drop the "days played - deathsX2" below your level, but that doesn't sound like it would be significant - each death would remove "2 times the multiplier" from your gamestage, as in, something between two and five? For a number that gets interesting at ~140 taking out 3 isn't exactly going to rock my world. With MP it'll get another 1.8 multi, so up to 9 GS reduction per death on insane.

You'd need to die a lot for that to make a dent? I don't mind, I'm just surprised at the math, effects of deaths seem quite weak here. I should prolly plot this stuff before making claims though, intuitive maths are never a good idea .. :)
Click to expand...
Try some examples then :)

Level 50, Day 30, Nomad difficulty

0 deaths: GS = 120

1 death: GS = 117

5 deaths: GS = 105

15 deaths: GS = 75 (lowest it can go at level 50, day 30)

Level 50, Day 30, Insane difficulty

0 deaths: GS = 200

1 death: GS = 195

5 deaths: GS = 175

15 deaths: GS = 125 (lowest it can go at level 50, day 30)

To my mind, gamestage doesn't get interesting till it hits 158, which is when Demolishers *can* begin to appear on horde night. That's the game-changer.

 
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Yeah, demos was what I was referring to, just didn't remember the exact number. Still well within astronomical precision.. ;)

 
Try some examples then :)
Level 50, Day 30, Nomad difficulty

0 deaths: GS = 120

1 death: GS = 117

5 deaths: GS = 105

15 deaths: GS = 75 (lowest it can go at level 50, day 30)

Level 50, Day 30, Insane difficulty

0 deaths: GS = 200

1 death: GS = 195

5 deaths: GS = 175

15 deaths: GS = 125 (lowest it can go at level 50, day 30)

To my mind, gamestage doesn't get interesting till it hits 158, which is when Demolishers *can* begin to appear on horde night. That's the game-changer.
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Dude, youre the man.

Thanks for the breakdown. Gotta say, that's quite a complicated system.

Explains what I'm seeing, of course. Just did Day 42 Horde A16 WOTW with my game set a 64 Blood Moon Count and there was a constant almost-40 Zeds beneath me all night. They do not let up in WOTW. The waves come constant all night.

I'm starting to hear Electrified Zeds when they spawn in buildings I pass by......zzzZZZZZZZTTTTzzzzzz...z.z.z.z = My Gs is over 1000 currently. Such a good game.....

 
The calculation was totally different in A16. Gamestage went to 6000 back then. So, GS 1000 in A16 is not the same as GS 1000 in A18. And I have no idea what WotW might do to it. :)

Highest GS I ever fought in A16 was 4000 (day 200). It was crazy but super fun. No Demolishers back then of course....

 
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