0xA: A nuclear missile hit balance. Balance have been destroyed

Game Talk The Drawing Board
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1. At least one map extra in every 3x3 map tiles zone. The worst stuff. 2. High-level items appear to be worn by low-level zombie and can be easily loot. I killed a zombie soldier and he drops a mininuke! GODDAMN MININUKE! JUST AS I STARTED! 3. You went out from your starting shelter, went to drug dillers corpses and obtained CBM: Fusion Blaster Arm. 4. MBR vests EVERYWHERE! Seriously, i can make a video where i'll find one in 5 minutes. 5. It was said not by me, but someone else: "In 0.9 obtaining all this stuff would take at least 2 seasons. In 0.A i've got it just in 2 days." 6. GrAnades are really OP. I made a little experiment where i created 3 character, gave them 20 granades and exploded. EVERY character have got at least +5 to all stats. 7. Bleeding. No comments - my character was bitten by a wolf ONE TIME(!) and bled out completely in 25 turns!

I agree with all of these, and a lot of the problem is a weird culture of people not being able to handle any deletion of anything and are way, way too precious about their own creations - as soon as you comment on this you get ‘it’s open source’ or ‘it is within the realms of physical possibility that a gang member could have a ninja sword so ALL OF THEM NEED ONE’.

This is only going to get worse unless someone does some serious pruning and balancing but that gets blocked by unreasonable attitudes if you try. Seriously, this game is haemorrhaging fans due to this. For gods sake, someone sort it out.

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Binky, what?

‘it is within the realms of physical possibility that a gang member could have a ninja sword so ALL OF THEM NEED ONE’.

This is not what is happening.

You are greatly exaggerating atm.

People are actually quite open at nerfing a lot of stuff, just not that open at removal of all kinds of things. And please recall that while you might not like the way you find items, others do have a lot of trouble with the game. Like the juliasomething person mentioned a while back.

Recall that people did make the whole mod system. Feel free to make pull requests at github.

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[quote=“Soyweiser, post:22, topic:5472”]This is not what is happening.

You are greatly exaggerating atm.

People are actually quite open at nerfing a lot of stuff, just not that open at removal of all kinds of things. And please recall that while you might not like the way you find items, others do have a lot of trouble with the game. Like the juliasomething person mentioned a while back.

Recall that people did make the whole mod system. Feel free to make pull requests at github.[/quote]

It is happening.
I tried to submit some git requests, but they got crushed (although that was before the mod system was in full swing), while I don’t mind that, the reasons were extremely far fetched. When the ninja swords got removed from (by John I think) from the gang spawn lists people went crazy saying that someone had once seen some swords in someones house so they have to stay. Devoid of balance, devoid of reasoning, just that they had to stay because they’ve seen ninja swords around.

The problem is the hatred against removal, and that everything included MUST stay. That’s not exaggerating as I see that absolutely all the time on this forum. As I’ve said before, I don’t know how we can move forward unless someone actually up and takes responsibility and says ‘actually, no we don’t need that in, it doesn’t work and it’s ridiculous’. Democracy just causes a buggy, unbalanced mess in things like this.

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[quote=“Binky, post:23, topic:5472”]It is happening.
I tried to submit some git requests, but they got crushed (although that was before the mod system was in full swing), while I don’t mind that, the reasons were extremely far fetched. When the ninja swords got removed from (by John I think) from the gang spawn lists people went crazy saying that someone had once seen some swords in someones house so they have to stay. Devoid of balance, devoid of reasoning, just that they had to stay because they’ve seen ninja swords around.

The problem is the hatred against removal, and that everything included MUST stay. That’s not exaggerating as I see that absolutely all the time on this forum. As I’ve said before, I don’t know how we can move forward unless someone actually up and takes responsibility and says ‘actually, no we don’t need that in, it doesn’t work and it’s ridiculous’. Democracy just causes a buggy, unbalanced mess in things like this.[/quote]
Having weapons still around != EVERY DRUG DEALER HAS A NINJA SWORD. It is why I said you exaggerate.

And which of your PR’s got closed? I’m also not always happy with how it works (and then I recall that the people who pull the stuff also have fulltime jobs, and checking the work of others is a shitty hobby). Just keeping up with all the issues, code changes, the forum, the wiki, IRC, etc. Is quite a lot of work. Do point out stuff you think got unfairly closed. But remember, please be civil about it. Remember that the devs cannot answer all questions all the time.

And people took responsibility, remember that you complained about the lack of design document. Check it is there.
The mod manager, also there. Etc. Do not act like people are not on your side and not working on stuff you talk about.

Fyi, I looked at reducing the corpses spawn for a while. But I couldn’t create an easy fix in 30 minutes. They have already been nerfed quite a bit with the addition of the monsters around the corpses.

And yes, “I have seen them around peoples houses” is a silly reason. But it is just as silly as Johns argument “I have been around drug dealers, they do not use them”. All circumstantial.

And the hatred of removal. Lol. Remember the solar power nerf? Everybody cried out solar power was now ruined.

Cataclysm is not a democracy FYI.

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if by “someone” you mean an actual developer of the game, then i agree wholeheartedly.

otherwise, no.

also by “ninja swords” i believe you mean katanas? maybe not.

and if this is in reference to my earlier comment, i was just kind of frazzled by seeing topics such as removing permadeath and removing bushes getting hot, which i PERSONALLY SUBJECTIVELY THIS IS NOT A FACT JUST THE WAY I FEEL DONT QUOTE ME ON THIS JUST AN OPINION feel are fundamental to the game

otherwise i fully support THE DEVELOPERS and any decision THEY make, unconditionally, though i may hold certain reservations about the “open source” nature of this project. it is a great game and i am happy just to play it.

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So if we’re talking about removing items, can we start with the fury stuff?

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In most other forums I frequent, a comment like that would be grounds for a temporal ban, just saying.

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In most other forums I frequent, a comment like that would be grounds for a temporal ban, just saying.[/quote]The sarcasm is strong in this one.

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Or is it not?

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[quote=“pulsefrequency, post:25, topic:5472”]if by “someone” you mean an actual developer of the game, then i agree wholeheartedly.

otherwise i fully support THE DEVELOPERS and any decision THEY make, unconditionally, though i may hold certain reservations about the “open source” nature of this project. it is a great game and i am happy just to play it.[/quote]

Yeah, I definitely mean a developer/staff people. I just think we should move towards a more measured and stringent approach for adding stuff (with everything else going in mods). I realise that progress might be slower, but quality is so much more important than quantity.
This has mainly got me so heated because balance seems to be getting worse instead of better, which is a real shame.

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I agree with the issues being raised, and I have for a long time. Some things discussed may be exaggerations, but not as much as you’d think. Drug dealer corpses are prolific, and 9 times out of 10, one corpse will have a katana. A huge huge part of the game is looting. When all you have to do to find one of the most uber epic weapons in the game is walk down the road a while, the looting mechanic is broken. It is not compelling gameplay to have incredibly powerful weapons served up to you like that, with the most modest and least risky exploration possible. It is not compelling gameplay to lure the single zombie soldier into a few bushes long enough to bash its head in with a rock or pipe or whatever, so that you can get the veritable treasure trove of high level gear that it was guarding.

The main issues are that the risk/reward ratio is so skewed by these easy drops, and because they are so powerful and you get them so quick, the time between upgrades becomes stretched, and thus the joy of looting and finding upgrades is blunted.

For potential fixes, I have a few to offer up:

[ol][li]Reduce corpse map extra spawns (sci corpses, military corpses, drug dealer corpses), or force the majority to spawn inside of cities somehow[/li]
[li]New item spawning system with finer tuned options (this group spawns 1-5 items, roll for #, 1st roll: 1-100, if 1, spawn rare item, if 2-15, spawn medium rare item, if 16-40, spawn uncommon item, if 60-100, spawn common item, roll other items)[/li]
[li]Require some sort of advanced crafting exploration for the best items. An example would be something like “explore to end of lab to find recipe for totally awesome laser. TAL requires a special prism to work properly, but the notes seem to indicate mining lasers use a similar prism. explore to end of mine to find mining laser. extract prism. return to lab and craft laser.”[/li][/ol]

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I calmed myself a little, so, i can try to give more examples.

  1. Now, 2/3 of houses have basements. Seriously, it’s too frequent. Moreover, roughly 1/3 of them is weapon store (i divide them all to four categories: weapon store, stuff store, chemistry lab and cannabis). And, in conclusion, in one of these basements i found a laser pistol. And that’s all in first day. Unfortunately, i didn’t have an UPS to power it up, but even so it’s a fact i found very rare weapon in first day in very common structure (house).
    Moreover - being so frequent, basements gives you almost infinite ammo supply, therefore there’s no real need to raid to gun stores anymore, where you might be killed by high-level zombie (gun stores usually located nearly to town center where high-level zombies spawn) and thus the game becomes even more easier and even more highly depending on luck (whether you find a basement with firearms or not depend from your luck).

  2. Speaking of dealers i didn’t mean that all of them have a CBM. I meant that they’re pretty frequent and, being frequent, it becomes easy to find some of these CBMs.

  3. Moreover, there’s always a zombie scientist wandering around scietist corpses and therefore it’s easier to find even in compare to dealers because it’s really hard to miss zombie scientist, while dealers corpses usually don’t have a zombie … damn, forgot that word … to them

  4. Someone gave me advice to play experimental build. Ok, i’ll check it.

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On the corpse issue, I installed both the chance for zombies rather than corpses (zeds have much worse loot & fight back, but do let you know there’s something around) and the chance for nether critters. If you think corpses are easy now, you’ve either had good luck or didn’t play earlier. They were, in fact, free gear back in the day.

They may be marginally more common now, but I think having critters around 'em confounds the issue. I imagine most folks didn’t scan their full vision circle for corpses back in the day, and having guards show up on the tracker helps clue us in.

As for these folks who always find katanas: I can’t replicate that. Haven’t found anything better than either a gun or an aluminum bat (maybe a trench knife? never a tanto or wakizashi) on my dealers since I installed the zed-chance; that was in December.

FTR, drug corpses can spawn spitters and smokers.

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I play cataclysm since 0.4 was released.

Also, by the way, (V) screen doesn’t show items which are in full vision circle, but further than in range that shows on screen.


Is that bug or feature?

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nope you can only see items with V up to a certain distance, which is definitely shorter than your max sight range

monsters seem to show up no matter what the range though… but dont quote me on that

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I agree with aforementioned issues. Some spawns should be limited/nerfed/bound to special places/etc. I’ve begun my roguelike experience with ADOM, maybe iat affected my roguelike viewpoint, but I appreciate some difficulty curve bound with skill of player rather then pure luck.

Yeah, game shouldn become some dungeon crawling when you go from one strictly defined area to another, fighting tougher and tougher Z’s while collecting better and better loot to fight huge boss in the end, but it also shouldnt be “whoa, I’ve found uber-weapon and power armor stuff right in my evac shelter!” . I understand, that it is quite difficult to manage infinite map/open world game in terms of balance, so “how to balance it” is still an open question. Better protection of good loot or placing it into labs/mines/mansions/military camps would help a little. I also understand that some people want just to dive straight into action, so some “loot variety” slider in options (that would adjust amounts of rare/military/civil/etc drop rates along with present drop scale factor) could do some word in pleasing everyone.

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I have to agree somewhat… I even restarted few times in cases where there was dead bodies with crazy good gear right next to the shelter…

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One of the key points here is that we will need to sacrifice some realism for better balance and gameplay. I think a bulk increase in rarity of non-common items is needed. I know there is the item spawn slider, but that just lowers everything, which causes common recipes to be much harder to find than they should be and makes common tasks more annoying. The same is certainly true for special buildings (basements and stuff as well) - whilst I agree they are more fun, they normally have very good loot and are now relatively common.

In many topics where this has been brought up before, it’s devolved into ‘well guns are everywhere in New England so they should be everywhere in the game’ - we either need to reduce the strength of some weapons/objects, or sacrifice realism and tone down the spawning of such things for better balance. I’d be happy with either, although I genuinely think that the best part RLs is really having to hunt for something powerful rather than just finding it lying around.

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I think that with the advent of wander spawns the issue with finding lots of guns may be somewhat less of a problem, if only because having massive numbers of noise-sensitive Zs wandering around will generally increase the pressure to use those guns. Honestly, I often start with a martial artist guy, and only use guns to deal with trickier foes like turrets and the like. I end up with piles of guns, grenades, etc that I never use, but might do in the event of being attacked by hundreds of zombles. With wandering zombies, though, you essentially need something large and beefy to mow the suckers down, because they just keep coming. It sorta reminds me of the old dynamic spawn system, actually, only I’ve traded in my longbow for a repeating crossbow xD

Edit: On topic, though, the whole guardian thing is a nice addition, and they feel a bit less like free loot. Wandering Mi-go from scientist spawns are pretty lethal early on, since they’re much faster than you and hit pretty hard.

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Which is pretty shitty, if the mi-go spawns near the shelter just because there were some corpses laying around… my shower victim looked out of the window and ended dead, as expected.

On the other hand, I prefer to die early on rather than later :smiley: