Lengthening of the Early game the return of the Mid game

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

So we have a topic discussing what weapons and items should be re balanced to make the game more challenging, but we didnt had a very solid plan of action or goals. So I am proposing these two:

Lengthening of the Early game, as the game stands now, early game is possibly the most fun and challenging part of the game, you could also argue that its the only game play stage to be currently balanced. It however ends pretty quickly, and every new version seems to make it considerably shorter. For example, few versions ago, lets say 0.5, i often kept my nail board for at least a week, now I seem to dich it for a firearm/katana/combat-knife/machete at day 2, day 3 if I am extremely unlucky, things that push me into the lategame even with negligible skills.

The Mid game: I am unsure as to what happened to the Mid-game, it seems completely gone from the game, I switch from carefully nailboarding zombies from windows on day 3 to carelessly submachingoing zombies on my awesome suit of armor from day 4 onwards. The sudden and fast switch into the late game has made several improvised weapons and bows useless, and has the side effect of looting runs becoming very monotonous and boring.

Now as it seems that removing stuff is a never do it thing, so the best possible course of action is the the tweaking of spawn list, stats and recipes. Basing myself on that, I have thought of those actions to achieve the aftermentioned goals

-Reduction of mutagen spawns: It seems that with the addition of more categories of targeted mutagens and serums the amount of them to be found inside labs has increased to ridiculous levels, yesterday I managed to find 23 targeted serums just in the first level of a lab, I dont think that should be the case

-Increased difficulty for crafting survivor gear: They have pretty low crafting requirements, and the materials needed are not exactly rare. Yet they seem to be late game gear or behave like other pieces of late game gear, also, they have a very strong S.T.A.L.K.E.R feeling to them and it seems odd for a survivor that has only been out for a week to be wearing them.

-Military gear! Military gear everywhere! Right now finding military gear is laughably easy, finding a single MBR an army jacket and a pair of army pants from a dead patrol pushes you straight into the late game, you simply become invulnerable to the average zombie. Not to mention the fact that you often also find firearms and other very usefull gear like MOLLE packs and knives.

-What happened to Specials? Is it me or the addition of things like fat and though zombies seems to have reduced their spawns significantly? Tweaking of monster spawnlists seems necessary.

-Every zombie is fat in america. Fat zombies are considerably easier to take down that their normal counterparts, and they outnumber normal zombies by a wide margin, this should change. I am of the opinion that they should be outright removed, or otherwise moved to Classic mode only

-Zombie soldiers are piñatas: Kill a pair of zombie soldiers; obtain enough loot to kill anything.

-Out of period and good melee weapons in general are too common, i think we should spend a week in game before we stumble upon one of the, with the first week mostly dominated by things like improvised weapons and misused tools.

-Firearms everywhere, pretty much the same problem as above

Thats what come to my mind first, but certainly, there are more things that need revising and re balancing.

2

I think the main problem is how the game’s spawn lists work. To my knowledge it checks every item on a list, and if it “rolls” the right number, that item spawns, but rather than end it there, it continues rolling. Which means if you’re really lucky, every item on the spawn-list can spawn.

If I’m wrong about this, please say so, otherwise I have a suggestion, but no knowledge of how to implement it, and I know damn well it’d be a big overhaul.

We’ll use a gun store for an example.

Similar to the vehicle spawn-codes you pick an X, Y location for an item, or item-group to spawn. For example We’ll say you’ve selected a shelf that holds bullets. You tell the game you want this particular shell to roll the “Ammo-Common” item-group x number of times, the “Ammo-Uncommon” item-group y number of times, and the “ammo-rare” item group z number of times. You also, because why the hell not, also want a 25% chance of a flyer for Rivtech weapons to spawn on this particular shelf.

The reason this system would work better is that in spawning items like this no matter how much additional content is added, you still only spawn a few items. EG the game rolls sucessfully on every single roll and you get 5 units of common ammo, 3 units of uncommon ammo, and one unit of rare ammo, whatever that unit may be. (EG 30 5.56 rounds) rather than a mishmash of assorted, nonsensical ammo.

Using a system like this would also allow for having separate groups, EG civ-weapons, mil-weapons, pmc-weapons and so on.

Another advantage of the item-groups is you can give the list sub-lists, for example a dead soldier spawning with an M4 and 5.56 rounds instead of an M4 and 9mm rounds. You also remove the odd soldier spawning with a Steel MBR vest, a Kevlar MBR Vest, an Empty MBR vest, and a Super Alloy MBR vest by compressing it into one list: “Miltiary_Armor_Torso”

3

Love all of it except maybe that last point about firearms.

This is new england we’re talking about…I.E America.

Military grade? reduce it quite a bit, but leave in varmit rifles (.22 caliber) and an assortment of low capacity shotguns and generic pistols/hunting rifles. Maybe make ammo a precious commodity? As it is there are 2 to 3 gun stores per town with too much ammo stocked. (Which is okay for real world, and even in the game if they didn’t have all the ammo. but why weren’t they the first places looted when martial law was declared?)

4

+1

Reasonable… reasons.

5

I think we should make guns and ammo rarer…

6

Is a very god idea, a spawn system like that should be a priority; implementng however, is unluckily pretty far beyond the scope of the balancing attempts of this thread. It could indeed fix a lot of problems with and especially with ammo and gear spawning, but could be a still far from now addition.

[quote=“Nopkar, post:3, topic:4912”]Love all of it except maybe that last point about firearms.

This is new england we’re talking about…I.E America.

Military grade? reduce it quite a bit, but leave in varmit rifles (.22 caliber) and an assortment of low capacity shotguns and generic pistols/hunting rifles. Maybe make ammo a precious commodity? As it is there are 2 to 3 gun stores per town with too much ammo stocked. (Which is okay for real world, and even in the game if they didn’t have all the ammo. but why weren’t they the first places looted when martial law was declared?)[/quote]

Its true, the amount of ammo in game does reflect reality, however, such a big amount of ammo in the current state of the game is pretty unneeded, from game play purposes. I personally, can easily clear a complete town with a pistol and 30 rounds of matching ammunition, and while I am an experienced player, i really doubt the game is meant to be like that.

Now if there were NPCs in game, the ammo would be justified, as you’ll want to preserve it for possible shootouts, but its still going to be a few releases at best before cover systems and NPCs are in, so reducing it now is not a bad idea if it increases difficulty for versions 0.B and 0.C, we can always easily revert it with git hub one Npcs work.

7

Is a very god idea, a spawn system like that should be a priority; implementng however, unluckily its pretty far beyond the scope of the balancing attempts. It could indeed fix a lot of problems with and especially with ammo and gear spawning, but could be a still far from now addition.

[quote=“Nopkar, post:3, topic:4912”]Love all of it except maybe that last point about firearms.

This is new england we’re talking about…I.E America.

Military grade? reduce it quite a bit, but leave in varmit rifles (.22 caliber) and an assortment of low capacity shotguns and generic pistols/hunting rifles. Maybe make ammo a precious commodity? As it is there are 2 to 3 gun stores per town with too much ammo stocked. (Which is okay for real world, and even in the game if they didn’t have all the ammo. but why weren’t they the first places looted when martial law was declared?)[/quote]

Its true, the amount of ammo in game does reflect reality, however, such a big amount of ammo in the current state of the game is pretty unneeded, from game play purposes. I personally, can easily clear a complete town with a pistol and 30 rounds of matching ammunition, and while I am an experienced player, i really doubt the game is meant to be like that.

Now if there were NPCs in game, the ammo would be justified, as you’ll want to preserve it for possible shootouts, but its still going to be a few releases at best before cover systems and NPCs are in, so reducing it now is not a bad idea if it increases difficulty for versions 0.B and 0.C, we can always easily revert it with git hub one Npcs work.[/quote]

Right, so a consensus would be to limit the ammo, maybe by half or even by a full three quarters. or hell, even a full 90% (that might be harsh)

8

I’m gonna say something that I’ve said before, and I know is unpopular, but I think this is important:

Melee weapons need to break.

Now, before I get lynched for this, I just want to explain myself. A nailboard is quite easy to manufacture. It is, also, not supposed to be a permanent thing. Like you said, you upgrade from it pretty fast. I tend to stumble across a katana somewhere fairly early on, and then that’s my weapon. Forever. You don’t need anything else. If nailboards splintered and broke, maybe at a high damage stage it hurt your hands to use it without gloves, well, that would extend the early game a bit as players need to continue to scavenge for decent melee weapon components. And if more powerful stuff degraded and needed material for maintenance, or just broke sometimes, well, that kicks you right back into the early game feel of desperate crafting and window-whacking.

9

[quote=“ArgusTheCat, post:8, topic:4912”]I’m gonna say something that I’ve said before, and I know is unpopular, but I think this is important:

Melee weapons need to break.

Now, before I get lynched for this, I just want to explain myself. A nailboard is quite easy to manufacture. It is, also, not supposed to be a permanent thing. Like you said, you upgrade from it pretty fast. I tend to stumble across a katana somewhere fairly early on, and then that’s my weapon. Forever. You don’t need anything else. If nailboards splintered and broke, maybe at a high damage stage it hurt your hands to use it without gloves, well, that would extend the early game a bit as players need to continue to scavenge for decent melee weapon components. And if more powerful stuff degraded and needed material for maintenance, or just broke sometimes, well, that kicks you right back into the early game feel of desperate crafting and window-whacking.[/quote]

I’m not a fan of dumping a big fat pile of no on someones suggestion, and truth be told where the idea is going is right up the alley I think of what this Re-balance is looking for

10

I agree with everything Ekarus said about spawn lists.

And John Candlebury gets a big +1000 from me for proving that balance can be discussed in a reasonable way… I agree with all your points (and didn’t you take care of the survivor gear difficulty yourself?)

11

No, binky has it but the commit is “dirty” I could and will relaunch it myself though.

Melee weapons breaking has been discussed before, consensus seems to be Yes, but only for certain items, but could remember wrong, general dev position is this if i remember correctly:

Improvised weapons and tools should break often, but proper ones should deteriorate pretty slowly and have chances to revert some of the damage done to them, for example, your katana will get dull after a while, but you should be able to resharpen it until it becomes a rusted lump of bent metal (which should take a while)

12

@John Candlebury: That you ditch the nailboard for a better weapon on day two or three… Isn’t that just because you’re becoming a better player? Once you know the game it’s pretty simple to know where to loot and raid for the chance of a better weapon.

As to military corpse spawns, perhaps a small (very small) reduction in their spawn rate. I still find more dead scientists and drug runners than military corpses, most military surplus are either empty or filled with items that aren’t too valuable (e.g one with only a few MREs and a helmet or two, as opposed to say, light amp goggles.) It’s still pretty rare to find a gun and ammo for it on the same spawn.

Survivor gear: God this stuff is freakin invulnerable. The turret shoots your torso for 88 damage! and not a damn scratch. Most of the time it doesn’t even scratch the armour. However what were the crafting skill reqs again? I thought they were fairly high. Maybe up the fabrication requirement?

As to crafting mats it’s more dependant on when you can find a kevlar vest. In my current game I had to scour two or three towns to find enough duct tape as the only hardware store nearby only had a single roll which I had by then used for stamping together plastic jerrycans. Couldn’t even get my hands on bleach to make glue to make duct tape until I raided a science lab or two.

Ammunition: I have piles of ammunition that I don’t use, all without ever raiding a gunstore. Something like nine Basements across two small towns and three LMOE shelters have given me horrific stocks of the stuff and I only ever use 9mm and .45, with occasionally .22 and .223/.308 for use with my rifles for the odd turret-- which I don’t even really need now due to having a pile of .45 FMJ. I don’t even need to use my shotgun on anything. :expressionless:

13

Well true, I have become a better player, the problem is that more often that not I can ditch the nailboard nearly effortlessly after finding a gun basement in the first houses I loot, or by finding a better weapon one of those random encounters that now litter the surface, I do feel like you had to place more effort before ditching the nailboard in previous versions.

Worthwhile stuff in military corpses is not actually the weapons they are carrying but actually their clothes (which are common) , they are very good. Dunno about how common they are though, my play stile is pretty nomadic and I do stumble into them pretty often, (if I havent stumbled upon a group of them by day 5 I do really consider the play through very unlucky.

Yep you can get very unlucky with the duct tape, I am only increasing the skills needed to craft them not the mats. Taylor and fabrication are very easy to increase anyways, I think it would be reasonable to have 7 by your twelfth day

14

Thanks for clarifying the stance on breakable weapons.

Ekarus, could you put the spawn list post on GitHub? That way, the devs would see it faster and hopefully fix the underlying mechanics issue soonish.

15

Yeah I messed up the commit, late night and running on fumes - sorry about that.

I completely agree with all said. Drastically scaling down ammo would make a huge difference to balance.

Getting rid of a lot of the dead military/gang spawns would be really good, as they pose 0 threat and give incredibly good loot. I’d be keen to cut them out all together if they can’t be made rare enough.

16

[quote=“Binky, post:15, topic:4912”]Yeah I messed up the commit, late night and running on fumes - sorry about that.

I completely agree with all said. Drastically scaling down ammo would make a huge difference to balance.

Getting rid of a lot of the dead military/gang spawns would be really good, as they pose 0 threat and give incredibly good loot. I’d be keen to cut them out all together if they can’t be made rare enough.[/quote]

one problem is that some people play with reduced spawn rate for loot. For example i keep it between 0.2 and 0.25. On the other hand, zeds are indeed loot piñatas. And i don’t thing their loot is affected by loot spawn rate.
So you see where a problem might appear. I will find rare ammo and plentiful of everything else on normal spawn rate, or incredibly rare ammo and enough other loot on my spawn rate. Still unbalanced from my pov.

17

[quote=“Binky, post:15, topic:4912”]Yeah I messed up the commit, late night and running on fumes - sorry about that.

I completely agree with all said. Drastically scaling down ammo would make a huge difference to balance.

Getting rid of a lot of the dead military/gang spawns would be really good, as they pose 0 threat and give incredibly good loot. I’d be keen to cut them out all together if they can’t be made rare enough.[/quote]

Don’t cut them alltogether, but they definitely need to be rarer. However if we make them rarer we shouldn’t need to nerf the loot so much-- or at all. Anyway I regularly see large amounts of corpses in these spawns, so maybe max cap it at 5 or 6-- maybe tweaking the loot they spawn as well.
In order of most common.

[ol][li]Clothes, helmets, backpacks etc.[/li]
[li]Foodstuffs (gum, canteens of water, MREs etc)[/li]
[li]Misc. Canteens, knives, binocs, radios, geiger counters, light amp goggles etc. Kevlar vests should probably go here too.[/li]
[li]explosives and ammunition. grenades etc.[/li]
[li]Firearms.[/li][/ol]

Just an idea.

18

I would be in favor of removing all kinds of corpse spawns or at least making them extremely rare (e.g. jabberewock level)

Right now they’re ubiquitous (how many blackhawks are there in new england?) and give excellent loot (all three types do, military is just the most ridiculous) but most importantly they require no risk or tactically interesting play by the survivor.

In case it’s not obvious I think removing kevlar and maybe combat knives from milsurp stores is a good idea as well (and do something about pawn shops)

Perhaps a more precise taxonomy for items (this item is tier X strong and should be found mostly in areas of Y difficulty) would be useful for design purposes, although it might seem too gamey I guess

As for labs, they are too big and have too much loot (cbms, mutagens, crafting resources) for the current level of risk they have (~=0). Hugely decreasing scientist id spawns would mitigate this somewhat or at least require the player to find/craft electrohacks and kill a turret, which is more interesting imo than "trip over a dead scientist)

19

Well military spawns could be made more dangerous by making most of the corpses try to kill you.

20

Zombie soldiers can be killed by stat 8/8/8/8 shower victims with a rock and a bush. Or you could walk around them.