Difficulty Tweaks

[Dire]

First off I want to say sorry for this post appearing long, I tried my best to make it as short as possible.

When Newcomers finish the tutorial and want to start their first Project Zomboid game they're going to see the current 4 difficulties.

1) Initial Infection

2) The First Week

3) 6 months later

4) Survival

Now automatically most people will assume

1) Easy

2) Normal

3) Hard

4) Very Hard
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Most people will click "The First Week" since it appears "Normal" because the description for the first week later even says "Moderate Horde, UnLooted Homes, Electricity and Water available for a limted period of time", it sounds pretty normal.

When most people like myself play for the first hour or two we will get bored (unless we noobishly run around shooting and have never played a zombie surviving game before). So we'll stop playing the first week and will start playing 6 months later since that's below The first week.

As we all know 6 months later is hell and no noob should ever play it, so now the player will think now I went to normal mode to hard mode when in reality they just went to easy mode to extremely hard mode. This will make players rage quit once they walk out of the house seeing 100 zombies around. Now the player will say to himself/herself that wow survival mode must be even harder! They'll rage quit the game, request a refund and write a bad review for the game, sadly.

I know there's Sandbox mode but certain players/new players like to stick around with the stock difficulties, just like how I did.

So what I recommend for is a new difficulty setup
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1) Initial infection (This will be "The first week")

2) The First Week (this will be harder then Initial infection but won't be as hard as survival mode, this should truly be "normal")

3) Survival mode (Survival mode will stay survival mode but this will appear as the 3rd option since "survival" is "hard" but not harder then six months later.

4) Six Months later (Six Months later mode will be the same but it'll appear as the 4th option, not the 3rd option, new players tend to think Six months later is "hard" but in reality it's Hell.)
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Tweaking the difficulty setup may seem silly and not really necessary but I think this simple tweak may help the developers a lot with there money. If you read the reviews personally you'll see certain people with 2-3 hours in this game and they'll write a horrible review on how it's slow paced but then it's to hard/something related to that, then they don't recommend it to there friends and then a chain reaction occurs ect.

[VonPumpkinson]

Originally posted by Affliction:

When Newcomers finish the tutorial and want to start their first Project Zomboid game they're going to see the current 4 difficulties.

1) Initial Infection

2) The First Week

3) 6 months later

4) Survival

Now automatically most people will assume

1) Easy

2) Normal

3) Hard

4) Very Hard

Which is correct. Survival, on the other hand, is both the First Week and Six Months Later. The difference is: no character XP multipler, no loot respawn, start with nothing (other than the clothes you wear), loot is hard to find and gather, and zombies will start small but will slowly grow into insane amount. Therefore, survival is the hell mode for experienced players only. Unless, you're a masochist.

Originally posted by Affliction:

When most people like myself play for the first hour or two we will get bored (unless we noobishly run around shooting and have never played a zombie surviving game before). So we'll stop playing the first week and will start playing 6 months later since that's below The first week.

I disbelief most players don't get bored in an hour or two hours when playing the First Week. If you played within those said hours, then you ended the game permaturely. Mind you that the First Week is canon story of the game and the infection has started to spread. It's allowing you time to build or holdup in a building.

Originally posted by Affliction:

As we all know 6 months later is hell and no noob should ever play it, so now the player will think now I went to normal mode to hard mode when in reality they just went to easy mode to extremely hard mode. This will make players rage quit once they walk out of the house seeing 100 zombies around. Now the player will say to himself/herself that wow survival mode must be even harder! They'll rage quit the game, request a refund and write a bad review for the game, sadly.

Players like these go in with arrogance and don't know the potential in how difficult the game can be. Again, unless, you're a masochist. The players who rage-quitted and refunded the game, they're dishonest and ignorant. In believing their (whinning) voice will be heard, if they had a reason and I doubt it. It's not way to get the developer's attention.

OP, this is not directed towards you. I'm only interpreting in what you've said. As for your proposition, there's no need to rearrange the default difficulties. Perhaps the developer re-word the descriptions for clearer understanding of the difficulty.