PC Zombie killin' experience gain

R

Rainspider

Refugee
So I just tackled my 14 days horde on the streets, after not being able to finish my base thanks to a very late auger, but that's RNG.

I prepared by whopping up 20 molotovs and 100 exploding bolts as a side dish to my trusty machete and beer.

While running and kiting around drunk, I even managed to kill and butcher a boar in 3 run-bys!

But to get to the point, all the experience that I earned that night, came from cleaning up the corpses in the next morning, as it seems that burning zombie flesh and exploding some zombie ■■■ doesn't give experience, while being highly effective and fun.

Is it intended? I was a little disapointed, because my last 20 levels came from mining out the hole for my base...

 
Experience is surely not balanced. Atm especially from mining afaik. Personally, I don't like zombies rewarding experience (you already get experience from the items you use to kill them), because the game shouldn't be encouraging you to go out and merrily grind zombies to raise your level, like you would in an arcade-y action shooter. Zombies in a zombie survival game imo, should be viewed by players as something ominous/foreboring which is best to be avoided when possible and the reward should be survival itself.

 
I'm also in the camp that thinks killing zombies shouldn't be rewarded at all - no xp and no loot.

Fighting zombies should be a risk you take because you don't want to die, not something you do for fun or for the rewards. There should be no benefit to killing zombies other than fewer zombies hunting/attacking you (and even that will only be a temporary state of affairs, of course, since more zombies will turn up later).

 
Remove the zombie xp and you remove any reason to bother killing any of them yourself.

Build a giant fortress of spikes and stand back watching them die... I dont see any fun in that

 
Remove the zombie xp and you remove any reason to bother killing any of them yourself.
Build a giant fortress of spikes and stand back watching them die... I dont see any fun in that
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If you can just build a fortress of spikes and stand back watching them die, it sounds more like an issue of traps being too effective. Traps are auxiliary ways to help you defend a base and their purpose in the first place is to protect you. Plus they are a static defense. Going out there killing zombies yourself to get experience is too counter-intuitive for a survival game. The reason to kill them should be to survive/defend yourself, not grind xp.

 
if this happened, no real reason to kill them at all. Might as well just turn them OFF in the settings. If they gave either no exp or no loot, you would still have a reason to kill them. Not having either, is not a reason to even have them.

 
I'm definitely in the camp that zombies should reward the player with loot and experience, though it should be in balance with everything else in the game.

If there is no reward whatsoever, I don't even risk damaging my fortress for horde night and just camp on top of every other city hall, with the occasional explosive thrown down for the lulz.

 
I'm definitely in the camp that zombies should reward the player with loot and experience, though it should be in balance with everything else in the game.If there is no reward whatsoever, I don't even risk damaging my fortress for horde night and just camp on top of every other city hall, with the occasional explosive thrown down for the lulz.
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Yeah, but that sounds like creating a problem to overshadow other problems... Same with the underground, someone could easily say "what reason would there be for me to go above ground on horde nights if zombies don't get me rewards?". That's not how survival games should work imo... the player shouldn't rush to "farm" the threat but try to survive and overcome it.

 
So I just tackled my 14 days horde on the streets, after not being able to finish my base thanks to a very late auger, but that's RNG.I prepared by whopping up 20 molotovs and 100 exploding bolts as a side dish to my trusty machete and beer.

While running and kiting around drunk, I even managed to kill and butcher a boar in 3 run-bys!

But to get to the point, all the experience that I earned that night, came from cleaning up the corpses in the next morning, as it seems that burning zombie flesh and exploding some zombie ■■■ doesn't give experience, while being highly effective and fun.

Is it intended? I was a little disapointed, because my last 20 levels came from mining out the hole for my base...
Click to expand...
The problem is that most of your kills were due to indirect damage. That doesn't count towards your exp.

IMHO this still needs work, but with limitations.

Hitting a z with a fire arrow or torch, and the fire kills it.

Blast damage from explosive bolts.

Blast damage from rocket launcher.

Damage cause by throwing explosives.

Things that should not count for kill exp....

Traps

Turrets

mines

campfires

 
The problem is that most of your kills were due to indirect damage. That doesn't count towards your exp.
IMHO this still needs work, but with limitations.

Hitting a z with a fire arrow or torch, and the fire kills it.

Blast damage from explosive bolts.

Blast damage from rocket launcher.

Damage cause by throwing explosives.

Things that should not count for kill exp....

Traps

Turrets

mines

campfires
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Yes I got that too and see the same problem with indirect damage, maybe it should even be a lower exp reward, as it is a easy way of crowd control.

And I'm with you too for the things that should not count.

Maybe it could be like:

player direct damage - 100% experience

player indirect damage - 50% experience

player trap damage - 0% experience as it is

 
why not getting xp for the amount of direct damage you make. you hit a zombie with an exploding bolt, do 50% damage of his hp, and he dies from the explosion. so you get 50% of the xp he offers. would also work for groups. first one has 50% hit, cause he hit the head, next one do a 10% hit to body, but stuned bonus, so 20%, and the third kill the zombie, so he gets the rest of 30% damage and xp.

now the first one hit the zombi, second hit the zombi, third kill him and get all of the xp.

and yes, only direct player damage should count. would be to easy to farm xp with explosives then, even if you lower the xp, you get from indirect damage.

 
if this happened, no real reason to kill them at all. Might as well just turn them OFF in the settings. If they gave either no exp or no loot, you would still have a reason to kill them. Not having either, is not a reason to even have them.
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And I fully support you in turning off zombies in your game. If all you need is XP and loot objects there are already enough of them in the game.

Other players who don't play the XP-meta game but a real survival game will then have the real choice of stealth or combat without falling behind other players (co-op or pvp).

 
100 exploding bolts by night 14? are you exaggerating or using the creative menu? a late auger drop? getting an auger by day 14 is pretty lucky in my experience!

100 exploding bolts means you unlocked steel, have 800 gun powder and 100 rolls of duct tape all by day 14, seems suspicious. :-P

I'm just teasing/kidding by the way, don't take me too serious! You are either super efficient or using the creative menu, either way is fine by me.

Back to the question, zombie XP did get nerfed a little in A16. I'm in the camp that would rather get experience from killing zombies than from digging holes, but thats because I mine a ton and I get too much xp from it! Hopefully XP is reworked some for A17.

 
100 exploding bolts by night 14? are you exaggerating or using the creative menu? a late auger drop? getting an auger by day 14 is pretty lucky in my experience!
100 exploding bolts means you unlocked steel, have 800 gun powder and 100 rolls of duct tape all by day 14, seems suspicious. :-P

I'm just teasing/kidding by the way, don't take me too serious! You are either super efficient or using the creative menu, either way is fine by me.

Back to the question, zombie XP did get nerfed a little in A16. I'm in the camp that would rather get experience from killing zombies than from digging holes, but thats because I mine a ton and I get too much xp from it! Hopefully XP is reworked some for A17.
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Usually I got steel smithing on day 8-9 playing on warrior, and i'm not a "super eficient" player... actually, most of the nights I hide myself on some place and go out for smoke (lost in game time and real life lungs......) living near to places like burnt forest, plains and/or wastedland gives you a huge supply of coal+nitrate and feathers. A working chem station is not too hard to find... so I'm cannot see how it can be suspicious.

About the xp, some time ago a few folks have noticed that explosions does not count as you killing (maybe something like it is happening to molotov too) and does not give you xp. In horde nights 7 and 14 usually I got 3-4 levels smashing Z's heads

 
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Remove the zombie xp and you remove any reason to bother killing any of them yourself.
Build a giant fortress of spikes and stand back watching them die... I dont see any fun in that
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Unless you remove or severely limit passive defenses, make zombies MATTER in larger numbers, remove mutants and actually put zombies in FRONT of specific locations you need to get to to survive.

It's one of the main focal points on my next mod Extinction after Ravenhearst 3.0 releases. The trick is not to make it overwhelming and boring.

Zombies in a Survival game should never be a backpack. As a matter of fact I don't know of any other Survival game that treats YOLO'ing into a group of zombies as a rewarding experience. They should be pesky, they should be feared and they should NOT be an easy way to bolster your survival cache or your player level. They should be a HINDRANCE to these things, not the contributor to them.

 
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100 exploding bolts by night 14? are you exaggerating or using the creative menu? a late auger drop? getting an auger by day 14 is pretty lucky in my experience!
100 exploding bolts means you unlocked steel, have 800 gun powder and 100 rolls of duct tape all by day 14, seems suspicious. :-P

I'm just teasing/kidding by the way, don't take me too serious! You are either super efficient or using the creative menu, either way is fine by me.

Back to the question, zombie XP did get nerfed a little in A16. I'm in the camp that would rather get experience from killing zombies than from digging holes, but thats because I mine a ton and I get too much xp from it! Hopefully XP is reworked some for A17.
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I got lucky and the quest trader got a working workbench and chem station that I used to a good extend, first bigger loot run on day 3 was a Crack a Book tower, to get all the important schematics learned, minibike built and to sell all the rest for beer and mining helmet and nv googles. Found a near perfect auger blade on day 1 but after countless of looted cars and 2 construction sites I had no luck on the rest, the 8th trader I found with lvl 3 secret stash finally had an auger with sub 50 auger parts.

Especially the construction sites are great early on with a decent crossbow and hunting knife, if you sneak really carefully, you can take out all the big guys to the top without one waking up. Plan B is jump up for the ladder to the most high platform.

With night vision googles it can be easier at night, because you emit no light. So you really only wake zeds up when being clumsy and loud, but if you wake one up you are pretty much ♥♥♥♥ed if it doesn't fall of the platform. Kill all to the top, loot on your way down.

 
I'd like to see Zombies give noteworthy exp in the final product.

I understand the mindset of those that don't. But I think that reasoning might be a little clouded by the current state of the game. I agree that zombies should be something to avoid, not intentionally fought for experience. But not giving experience shouldn't be why you are avoiding them. You should be avoiding them because they are dangerous. Scary. Because it is a risk to mess with them, and/or consumes valuable resources. The problem is that currently, this isn't the case. They are effectively walking piٌatas.

Lets not forget core game design concepts. If something is challenging, it should be rewarding. I certainly hope that zombies will be challenging (threatening, scary, risky) in the final release of the game. I want to be afraid of hordes, with the wisest move being running away. I want my primary experience source to be things other than zombie slaying because it's simply safer and more sensible from a resource management standpoint. I definitely DO NOT want to have the moments when I DO take on the challenge of putting zombies down to go unrewarded. Challenges should be rewarded. Period.

 
Remove the zombie xp and you remove any reason to bother killing any of them yourself.
Build a giant fortress of spikes and stand back watching them die... I dont see any fun in that
Click to expand...
Killing them should be a necessity to get to ressources that you wouldn't be able to get to otherwise. Which leads to another thing, anything more than a basic base shouldn't be able to reach self-sustainability, players should be forced to go out and scavenge. The zombies should be made more numerous, and be basically immune to non-head trauma (dismemberment should still a thing), in a way that zombies basically don't die unless you bash their skull in or shoot them through the eye.

Also, nothing in the game should make you immune to the stun effect, and when that effect comes into play, the zombie should be grappling you biting at your face.

Remove bedroll spawning, if you die you respawn at a random place in the world.

And then finally, we should have some gameplay elements outside our bases that go beyond surviving. How about a need to help out other survivers? Help them build rudimentary defenses and such a thing, help us keep building and secure our nice NPC friends and fight the NPC bandits.

 
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Zombie kills should give xp, of course. Even the people saying "they're the obstacle, they should be feared and avoided" should get that beating one of the big-bads should be a major accomplishment, worthy of some rewards.

And so the obvious compromise here, to keep the game fun for everyone, is to ramp up the difficulty of the top 1 or 2 difficulty settings a bunch, so the people who enjoy slaying undead can have their fun, and those who think zombies should be the hugest. threat. EVAR. can get what they want too.

 
Zombie kills should give xp, of course. Even the people saying "they're the obstacle, they should be feared and avoided" should get that beating one of the big-bads should be a major accomplishment, worthy of some rewards.
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Well, if a reward is neccessary I would prefer the reward to be loot. Because then the game can be balanced so that it doesn't matter how you cope with the zombies to get at something, because that something gives you all the xp.

 
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