Balancing the game

[EkarusRyndren]

maybe a 5-10% chance to hit for each additional adjacent zombie.

Mmmmm try 25% to 40% Possibly scaling with “unarmed” skill, I find it difficult to believe you’d be able to easily dodge two opponents without being out of a DC or Marvel comic, let alone three or more.

[ChristopherWalken]

Well I see two ways to do it (keep in mind I haven’t looked at the code so I don’t know how easy they are)

-Simpler
Have the increment be bigger the more of them there are exponentially.

-Fancy
Have the bonus dependant on position.
2 zombies in front of you= tiny bonus
1 in front 1 behind= big bonus

@Ekarus
We have a dodge skill, or am I misunderstanding?
Also I always took the “dodge the attack” as including blocks with your weapon and attacks that hit so weakly they wouldn’t even roll against armour aside from the clean misses, in which case it makes a bit more sense for an experienced fighter against the brainless undead, imho.

[One-Eyed_Jack]

I think that just increasing health and damage of creatures wouldn’t really make the game harder, it’d just encourage the player to kite more and potentially fight less. It’s already pretty easy to raid the outskirts of most shops/towns without actually fighting any zombies. Also chokepoints are very common (windows, doors.) I’m kind of skeptical that hordes will alter anything that much, considering that by day 9-10 you can craft armour that makes you pretty much invincible; currently, using 2-3 layers of survivor gear (not that hard to craft) and the alloy plating cbms I can literally walk up to bunkers, take 100+ shots from turrets with no damage to myself or my gear, roundhouse them to death in one turn, and maybe lose |\ or so to one body part from the explosion (unless I knocked them back, in which case I take no damage.) Obviously you can also one-shot them from range with the caseless rifles or even a 5.56 nato guns or whatever

Part of this is that it seems like every third wilderness tile contains a heli or pile of corpses, and the loot from these is very very good (kevlar, combat knives, id cards that let you raid labs [which themselves are not dangerous if you know how to check for turrets and have remarkable loot], I’ve even found a wakizashi from drug dealer corpses) and the risk is trivial or nonexistent (zombie soldiers are annoying to kill but easy to evade.)

With this in mind I’d recommend that a.) mid-game areas like labs and bunkers become much harder to safely loot and b.) items that are very powerful be impossible to find lying around (be it in pawn shops or in.) I think that if b.) doesn’t happen then it doesn’t really matter how hard the late-game content is, because the path of least resistance will still just be to raid gun stores and pawn shops until you have your endgame kit regardless

Of course if you have enough batteries and find the right books you can make a full set of armor and a suite of weapons out of a car and some flashlights but I find that fairly tedious

That said, I don’t think removing caseless guns katans etc will matter much because they’re not significantly more overpowered than many other things in the game (books, cooked meat, etc)

[Binky]

[quote=“Binky, post:15, topic:4901”]-snip-

“so that players feel a bit of danger once in a while”

Go up against any wildlife bigger than a cat without a weapon and tell me you feel safe XD I don’t see why you should feel fucked when you’re carrying a gun against wildlife. In general a gun VS even a bear is gonna put the odds in your favor. Using a high caliber weapon will do large amounts of damage, if you try to use a .22 against a bear, you’re probably going to loose. If you use a .308 round against a bear, you’re probably going to win. I don’t see what needs nerfed or buffed in this area.[/quote]

im saying buff everything that ISNT wildlife! Definitely don’t need to buff that.

oneshot/zipgun and makeshift should all stay in - agreed.

[100Rads]

The thing that bugs me the most are the skills, and the crafting.

A random dumbass dude sharpens five thousand sticks; suddenly he’s an expert metalsmith! (fabrication skill. ugh.)
Moving recipes to books doesn’t help it a lot, and there should be more variety in skills. There should be a carpentry skill for wood crafting, smith for forging.
Construction skill; guy removes a bunch of glass from broken windows, suddenly he knows how to build a rope and pulley system for a palisade gate? Seems logical.
Firearms skill; guy shoots a bunch of squirells, he can create ammo? There should be an additional skill used for making gun mods and ammo, and it could be trained by disassembling ammo, reassembling it and through reading.

tl;dr There are some of my ideas, add a few more skills, and balance the ones we already have.

[EkarusRyndren]

-snip-

I’ve said several times that “Cooked meat” needs a "Tired of Eating " several times, but every time it gets shot down.

You can strip away all the content you want, the “best gear” change is just going to shift what people do to get “the best” weapons.

[quote=“Binky, post:24, topic:4901”]im saying buff everything that ISNT wildlife! Definitely don’t need to buff that.

oneshot/zipgun and makeshift should all stay in - agreed.[/quote]

Well short of giving zeds the mysterious bullet dodging ability of the NPCs I don’t see what you’re asking, why should a zombie have more health than a living person?

[quote=“100Rads, post:25, topic:4901”]The thing that bugs me the most are the skills, and the crafting.

A random dumbass dude sharpens five thousand sticks; suddenly he’s an expert metalsmith! (fabrication skill. ugh.)
Moving recipes to books doesn’t help it a lot, and there should be more variety in skills. There should be a carpentry skill for wood crafting, smith for forging.
Construction skill; guy removes a bunch of glass from broken windows, suddenly he knows how to build a rope and pulley system for a palisade gate? Seems logical.
Firearms skill; guy shoots a bunch of squirells, he can create ammo? There should be an additional skill used for making gun mods and ammo, and it could be trained by disassembling ammo, reassembling it and through reading.

tl;dr There are some of my ideas, add a few more skills, and balance the ones we already have.[/quote]
Well having a left foot skill and a right foot skill for walking and then a left foot and a right foot skill for running and a left foot and a right foot skill for sneaking seems to just bloat the skills list. People are going to grind. You’re complaining about a standard RPG game mechanic, how do you propose to fix grinding without adding ten thousand skills?

[DG123]

The irony here is I don’t become overpowered by using the items mentioned.

A M1911 .45 pistol is one of the deadliest weapons I’ve used. I’m almost invincible through the use of Survivor crafted clothing.

Samurai armour would probably weaken me in comparison.

One of the “exotic” weapons barely tickles enemies. Namely one of the laser pistols. Meanwhile my laser CBM destroys most enemies easily.

So I don’t really have an issue with the things stated.

I just think the game needs to be more challenging. Why not have zombie hordes attack your home base, instead of the occasional zombie bear?

How about making horrible growths of human eating fleshy matter spread across the face of the planet devouring everything they touch unless beaten back with flamethrowers or nuclear bombardment?

There just isn’t much of a threat in the game right now unless you do something stupid or actively search out trouble.

[100Rads]

[quote=“EkarusRyndren, post:26, topic:4901”]-snip-
Well having a left foot skill and a right foot skill for walking and then a left foot and a right foot skill for running and a left foot and a right foot skill for sneaking seems to just bloat the skills list. People are going to grind. You’re complaining about a standard RPG game mechanic, how do you propose to fix grinding without adding ten thousand skills?[/quote]
No, I’m not against grinding, but I’m against the skill. If a guy works with wood, how can he learn how to make metal swords and armours? It doesn’t make sense.

[ChristopherWalken]

Well short of giving zeds the mysterious bullet dodging ability of the NPCs I don't see what you're asking, [b]why should a zombie have more health than a living person?[/b]

Is this a real question?

They don’t feel pain, They don’t need to breathe (as far as I can tell), They might not even need blood.
Hell as far as I can tell even brain damage is not a guaranteed kill in-universe.

They definitely need a health buff. Especially the high end ones like Hulks, they’re pushovers right now if your combat skills are above 4.

[One-Eyed_Jack]

You can strip away all the content you want, the “best gear” change is just going to shift what people do to get “the best” weapons.

That’s my point. Currently, you don’t need to do anything interesting to get extremely strong items except walk or drive around for a while and maybe do a little crafting/reading. It would be more interesting if you actually had to expose yourself to a risk/challenge to get that gear, or the components of it.

I don’t personally think any content should be removed (well, maybe the falming weapons), although I think significantly altering rarity/placement would potentially make the game a lot better

[EkarusRyndren]

I just think the game needs to be more challenging. Why not have zombie hordes attack your home base, instead of the occasional zombie bear?

See unimplemented wandering hordes

How about making horrible growths of human eating fleshy matter spread across the face of the planet devouring everything they touch unless beaten back with flamethrowers or nuclear bombardment?

See unimplemented triffid grove expansion, see partially implemented fungal bloom expansion.

What we really need, is for people to sit down, and work on the partially implemented/unimplemented planned features.

But naturally, no one knows how or wants to.

[John_Candlebury]

They definitely need a health buff. Especially the high end ones like Hulks, they’re pushovers right now if your combat skills are above 4.

This, even if I almost died, I shouldn’t be able to machete them to death with skills of 4 like I have done in the past.

Also armor values should be recalculated, right now i can walk towards turrets wearing nothing more than a riot helmet and swat armor and not even get scratched, lets not even speak about MBR vests.

[EkarusRyndren]

Also armor values should be recalculated, right now i can walk towards turrets wearing nothing more than a riot helmet and swat armor and not even get scratched, lets not even speak about MBR vests.

Armor values are determined by the material type. You can’t set values for items, which personally bothered me while I was making the MBR vests. Coverage on them is 85 Percent though,

[Binky]

I’ll reiterate: I can’t add any new mechanics to the game - I don’t have the time or the skill, and I’d probably break more than I fix. The code is a horrible mess and the wandering hordes is something I can’t even imagine where to start on.

So far, commonly agreed threads seem to be:
-Buff to most enemies (which are NOT wildlife).
-Limit crafting to more basic weapon and armour.
-Nerf ranged weapons to be less effective, especially the lower end ones.

These are simplistic ways of putting it, but is there an agreement on those three things?

[ChristopherWalken]

As of a couple experimental versions ago, turrets still had insane damage spikes happen occasionally.
Reinforced Barbute Helm + Survivor Mask + Full heath head = Dead in 1 bullet.
And while I’ll agree with you that realistically a barbute helm would not be very good against bullets (I took it for the cool factor mostly) statwise it’s moderately great

@Blink
I generally agree.
I don’t use ranged too much though.

[John_Candlebury]

By the way tonfas are not really out of place. Police officers world wide do use them a lot, they are just often called Nightsticks or T-batons instead of given their traditional names.

[Binky]

By the way tonfas are not really out of place. Police officers world wide do use them a lot, they are just often called Nightsticks or T-batons instead of given their traditional names.

Yeah, but we have police batons as well - this is what I mean about the needless bloat.

[John_Candlebury]

Ohh we also have normal batons? Wasn’t aware, then yeah no real reason to have them, especially as they are the damn same thing.

[John_Candlebury]

Also the survivor gear could have a nice rebalance, especially the lone pieces (the trenchcoat, the pants, the harness, the vest) I don’t think we should really be able to break the 80 volume mark without being encumbered at all. And with an encumbrance of 1, I can easily duplicate that amount

[Binky]

[quote=“Rekozg”]One thing that would balance Cata a little, if equipment would degrade over time. People don’t often realize, but everything around us is designed and built to fail after a period of time - they are not built to last forever. But anything except armor and food last forever in this game, and armor only gets damaged in combat. The total overabundance of resources kills the survival aspect of the game. If you can climb the not so steep learning curve, then simply staying alive becomes laughably easy. From that point on you can only entertain yourself by exploring, hoarding and killing stuff in ridiculous ways. The first and the last gets boring fast, and the second isn’t fun to begin with.

Now if stuff would degrade over time: the beginning of the game would be the easiest, you could get as much stuff as you can carry and then some. Then as the expiration date would slowly catch up to everything and resources would get scarce, the game would get harder. Your equipment would also lose its quality: your blades would lose edge from continuous use and become less effective and sometimes even brake; your guns would jam often leaving you in a dire situation; your electronics would simply stop working. You would repeatedly find yourself in the situation that you would have to go to town, and get replacements for your broken stuff. A tad bid more realism and fun in my opinion.[/quote]

This has been suggested and strongly rejected by the main devs. I completely agree that it would be a fantastic idea and am wholeheartedly behind it, but it’s been shot down too many times to count unfortunately.

One idea I did have was to get rid of being able to make your own bullets (and the really good arrows) - it used to be like this, and it really did help the game become more of a challenge. Sure you could still get ultra strong with melee, but there’s always a bit of a danger, rather than ranged which is pretty much none. Ammo would then become a scarce resource which it’s important to save and conserve, adding a bit of later game challenge.