Ultimate Weapon Challenge

[Doko]

I don't know what's up with these "kill X amount of zombies" challenegs but they always feel like they are based entirely on sheer luck and RNG when it comes to killing zombies with specific weapons. I say this because the latest UWC has me in the 2nd city with a new machete tot est out by killing 40 zeds, trouble is the game keeps generating 34-7 of them in the starting area and there are no more to be seen for blocks and by the time I finally come across the last 2-3 I need I;m always out of time regardless. Apart from that I haven't been tripped up, bitten or slowed in any way from start to finish, it always feels like the game is deliberately trying to make me scramble for the last few zombies which boggles the mind considering the townw as full of them before starting the challenge, by taking so many of them away and giving you a strict set number of zeds, it takes away some of the immersion simply because it wanted to see how I perform based on pure luck and not skill when being swarmed by 40+ zeds.

Most of these challenges seem to involve running and missing your markers an awful lost, like the tineist mistake can be objectively fatal and to me that doesn't seem like much of a challenge, especially with how restricted you are since you cannot use any consumables or items to complete challenges in different order and yet I've seen countless games that allow you to confront their challenges with various tools and positions that worked rather wlel but for some reason with this game it;s "run from X-Y, can't use anything and a trip or two means instant fale", "kill X amount with Y gun but we'll only spawn half of the number of X around you and you still can't use anything else".

I know these are supposed to be "challenges" but they honestly feel like they are based purely on luck and hardly much on skill let alone allowing us to think outside the box (using different weapons/skill/items). I do hope the "Following" expansion comes with a different set of challenges that aren't simple "kill X with melee or gun" and "Run from point A-B" because most are just tedious and boring at best, the first few from the start are fine though.

Before someone decides to tear me limb from limb as some ♥♥♥♥♥ whiner, this is just my opinion on their challenges, if you don't like said opinion then take it eslewhere, I merely want to discuss about them and their faults.

[Randy Marsh]

i can appreciate where you're coming from in your mini-rant. It's justafiably annoying in it's "sameness" sometimes. I usually use them to work on my aim to be honest- by that i mean my head-slicing aim. Once I got that down pretty much anything goes down with one or three headshots.

The parkour challenges are the ones that get me lol. they aren't even that hard, I'm just bad under pressure and i end up blowing them a lot before i can finish,

[Mepho]

I had issues with the leg crushing challenge, so I went looking for a cheap trick over youtube and noticed how the guy in the video just dropped from the starting point on a group of zombies, while I was using the rope to reach a group up ahead. Thinking to straight up copy said video I tabbed back to find that the zombie group under the starting point of the challenge didn't spawn.

So I compared the zombies in the video with those in my game, and it turned out 2 or 3 groups spawned for me, with some "quick infected" (can't remember the name, the ones that climb during day) spawning here and there by themselves, while in the video it was quite littered with zombie groups.

This led me to believe it's a bug related to zombie spawns at the beginning and during the challenges.
Didn't read anyone mentioning it, so I thought it was just me and since challenges are still doable (even thou obviously more annoying) I didn't care to talk about it.

Since you seem to be in the same situation, we might be onto something.

Anyone else experiencing this?

[Randy Marsh]

Originally posted by Mepho:

I had issues with the leg crushing challenge, so I went looking for a cheap trick over youtube and noticed how the guy in the video just dropped from the starting point on a group of zombies, while I was using the rope to reach a group up ahead. Thinking to straight up copy said video I tabbed back to find that the zombie group under the starting point of the challenge didn't spawn.

So I compared the zombies in the video with those in my game, and it turned out 2 or 3 groups spawned for me, with some "quick infected" (can't remember the name, the ones that climb during day) spawning here and there by themselves, while in the video it was quite littered with zombie groups.

This led me to believe it's a bug related to zombie spawns at the beginning and during the challenges.
Didn't read anyone mentioning it, so I thought it was just me and since challenges are still doable (even thou obviously more annoying) I didn't care to talk about it.

Since you seem to be in the same situation, we might be onto something.

Anyone else experiencing this?

the way i've ended up cobbling together fixes has been to straight up change the files through scripting. I've got multiple physics Builds scripted for different types of gameplay- but the underlying mechanics are usually more or less the same in regards to how i've changed zombie behaviour, hit-detection, critical chance of de-limbing/decaps, and a bunch of other junk i've forgotten too- i try to keep it "balanced" in ways but it's definitely "cheaty" single player stuff I've manipulated after i finished and got bored - it's not a great solution but it's a sort of workable one for me.

[Mepho]

Originally posted by Randy Marsh:

the way i've ended up cobbling together fixes has been to straight up change the files through scripting. I've got multiple physics Builds scripted for different types of gameplay- but the underlying mechanics are usually more or less the same in regards to how i've changed zombie behaviour, hit-detection, critical chance of de-limbing/decaps, and a bunch of other junk i've forgotten too- i try to keep it "balanced" in ways but it's definitely "cheaty" single player stuff I've manipulated after i finished and got bored - it's not a great solution but it's a sort of workable one for me.

While I'll thank you for your input, I'd rather try my luck with "harder" challenges or just skip them than get messing with the game files to fix things myself (I'm quite lazy yes, but also totally paranoid about modding steam games due to VAC and unclear policies every time, holding quite a big library on my account).

If this turns out to be an actual bug and not some random issue (or just a difference between game versions, meaning both updates and platforms) I'd gladly report it for fixing (by the devs, not me).

[Randy Marsh]

Originally posted by Mepho:

Originally posted by Randy Marsh:

the way i've ended up cobbling together fixes has been to straight up change the files through scripting. I've got multiple physics Builds scripted for different types of gameplay- but the underlying mechanics are usually more or less the same in regards to how i've changed zombie behaviour, hit-detection, critical chance of de-limbing/decaps, and a bunch of other junk i've forgotten too- i try to keep it "balanced" in ways but it's definitely "cheaty" single player stuff I've manipulated after i finished and got bored - it's not a great solution but it's a sort of workable one for me.

While I'll thank you for your input, I'd rather try my luck with "harder" challenges or just skip them than get messing with the game files to fix things myself (I'm quite lazy yes, but also totally paranoid about modding steam games due to VAC and unclear policies every time, holding quite a big library on my account).

If this turns out to be an actual bug and not some random issue (or just a difference between game versions, meaning both updates and platforms) I'd gladly report it for fixing (by the devs, not me).

yeah man i dig ya. no sweat! just to clarify, techlands supports modding and scripting and you will never get a VAC ban from a techland game.
I know how it is to want 100% clarification before risking an account though brother for sure!
You might want to read up about what a VAC ban does to you, because it only ever affects the game it was for and it doesn't brick your account, it just goes on your record and people can always see you had a VAC ban.

Not to pressure you or anything i just wanted to clarify because it seemed like you had some misinformation about it.

[Doko]

Originally posted by Mepho:

I had issues with the leg crushing challenge, so I went looking for a cheap trick over youtube and noticed how the guy in the video just dropped from the starting point on a group of zombies, while I was using the rope to reach a group up ahead. Thinking to straight up copy said video I tabbed back to find that the zombie group under the starting point of the challenge didn't spawn.

So I compared the zombies in the video with those in my game, and it turned out 2 or 3 groups spawned for me, with some "quick infected" (can't remember the name, the ones that climb during day) spawning here and there by themselves, while in the video it was quite littered with zombie groups.

This led me to believe it's a bug related to zombie spawns at the beginning and during the challenges.
Didn't read anyone mentioning it, so I thought it was just me and since challenges are still doable (even thou obviously more annoying) I didn't care to talk about it.

Since you seem to be in the same situation, we might be onto something.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Wow I'm glad I'm not the only one who had issues with the leg crushing one, that took so many attempts for me just to get it right (about 11 times), the headshots challenge was also a bit annoying since zeds were moving about quite frequently and died to regular shoulder shots instead of headshots counting (I find Romero's rules to be the baseline for zombie films/games and some do stray from this).

I think the main point Techland needs to sort out is the number that spawn for almost any challenge, I mean these should primarily be down to our personal level of skill rather than pure luck, I also wish we could use heavies/lighter weapons for our challenges, the leg crushing one for example would have been more straightforward with a sledgehammer than a weak bat and I also noticed that most weapons for those challenges were basic level weapons or very vanilla looking ones that really didn't give much if any spice to those challenges, the ultimate weapon one changed the machete from time to time but the end result was more or less a weapon you could craft in the end via the plethora of blueprints you'll gather along the way.

I think the rest of the game is rgeat though, just the challenges don't feel like challenges and feeel too much the same as one another and don't do much to stand out.

[Mepho]

Originally posted by Randy Marsh:

yeah man i dig ya. no sweat! just to clarify, techlands supports modding and scripting and you will never get a VAC ban from a techland game.
I know how it is to want 100% clarification before risking an account though brother for sure!
You might want to read up about what a VAC ban does to you, because it only ever affects the game it was for and it doesn't brick your account, it just goes on your record and people can always see you had a VAC ban.

Not to pressure you or anything i just wanted to clarify because it seemed like you had some misinformation about it.

I was actually aware of the info you gave me, but I still have a hard time "trusting" policies and stuff that won't allow for resolutions post facto (meaning if ♥♥♥♥ happens, consequences will be definitive despite the cause being just or not). I think I got traumatized by Steam's early days with VAC shutting down random accounts. :D

Plus I suppose a bit of pride. Not ever getting a ban in about 17 years of online gaming, "smearing" myself now would feel awkward (I'll admit it's quite childish, but I still care about silly things sometimes).

Originally posted by Sun Streaker:

[...]I think the main point Techland needs to sort out is the number that spawn for almost any challenge, I mean these should primarily be down to our personal level of skill rather than pure luck[...]

I'm not sure spawns for challenges are supposed to be random. Whenever I had to go through a single one multiple times, spawns looked exactly the same every time. Maybe the number of zombies was off, I didn't really count them, but the positions on which groups would spawn were spot-on.

[Mepho]

Update about this.
Once again was having issues with a challenge, this time one of those that require you to deliver stuff at various checkpoints.
This time the problem was having 5-6 rifle sporting dudes on one of those checkpoints, and I couldn't find how to deal with them without wasting time for the challenge.
So, obviously enough, turns out those guys are not supposed to be there, as the walkthrough video had the area clear.

Might be something I'm supposed to have cleared out already? But then again why the game makes the challenge available if so?

[edit]
It seems it was related to the Insulin quest. I suppose it was just bad luck on overlapping things.