Add a difficulty setting with better scaling

[Umbreon™]

I'm 2 ingame months in without dying on Adventurer to get the hang of the game and now I've bumped difficulty to Nomad in the same save. The difficulty difference is visible, however not as big as it should be for a whopping 2 months. It makes me want to increase the difficulty even further, but I think that might break things a bit, what with having gotten to the equivalent gamestage without issue as the game didn't scale well.
My suggestion would be to add a setting that allows the difficulty to scale alongside the gamestage, rather than have gamestages be the only thing that makes the game harder and improves loot over time. Basically, with this setting you could start with a difficulty equivalent to Adventurer for your first week, then directly after that week it increases to Nomad, and after an ingame month it increases to Warrior. After 2 or 3 months it increases to Survivalist and maybe cap it out there.
With this the difficulty would make bigger, noticeable spikes matching the 7th day hordes, kind of like showcasing the zombies becoming much more dangerous as time goes by rather than simply have a weekly "event" that you just have to survive through then everything goes as normal directly after that.
I know that I could simply start my game on those difficulties and increase them myself accordingly, but I feel it would be better if we had a setting that would scale it on its own, so there is less player input and more immersion.

[blazha]

Your gamestage on default settings goes 1x day/level, when you increase difficulty to next level it goes 1.2x day/level (something like that, values may not be correct). So if you change difficulty after 2 months it won't actually increase your gamestage right away, it will just progress faster than before. The only noticable difference is zombie HP and damage. You can't just boost your gamestage from 100 to 150 by changing 1 setting.
But I don't get what you are trying to achieve, after 2 months you should be seeing irradiated zombies in every poi and horde nights should be glowing green. There is nothing after that. Gamestage 300 is the same as gamestage 300000000, difficulty will only make them bigger bullet sponges.

[Rob]

Ive found that setting the Bloodmoon horde to 1 day with a range of 7 days adds an interesting dimension of difficulty, since you never know when the next horde night will be.

[Devolta]

Yeah it could use some improvement but in the interim you should increase difficulty a bit more if you feel it is too easy and don't want to restart. You considered it, you should go for it and give it a try. You can always bump it back down if it is too harsh.

[Umbreon™]

Originally posted by blazha:

-snip-

Huh, I thought the gamestage calculation took the difficulty as a multiplier directly instead of being "added". I guess that would explain why everything is so easy having played so far into Adventurer and not have much of a difference bumping to Nomad.
As for what I'm "trying to achieve", i mean that the difficulty could scale a little better and sooner. Basically, I want to play on Warrior or a higher difficulty but without the (very) early game struggles.

Originally posted by SirPeanut:

Ive found that setting the Bloodmoon horde to 1 day with a range of 7 days adds an interesting dimension of difficulty, since you never know when the next horde night will be.

I actually planned for something like this with a later modded run, to try to get a more "combat focused" run while attempting to make this game work like CoD Zombies.

Originally posted by Devolta:

Yeah it could use some improvement but in the interim you should increase difficulty a bit more if you feel it is too easy and don't want to restart. You considered it, you should go for it and give it a try. You can always bump it back down if it is too harsh.

Yeah, however my idea is that this is done more passively by the game itself. It's just a suggestion to make this an actual setting, I know it's something I can just do myself.

[Devolta]

Ah I get ya. I thought you meant scaling on the sense of a setting. Like there should be an inbetween say Adventurer and the next one up. But you actually meant scaling automatically.

It sort of does that with the various 'tougher' zombies spawning more towards higher game stages but I get what you mean. That could be also adjusted to scale softer/tougher depending on a setting - if it were there.

On that I do agree. Apologies for misunderstanding your point.

[Umbreon™]

Originally posted by Devolta:

Ah I get ya. I thought you meant scaling on the sense of a setting. Like there should be an inbetween say Adventurer and the next one up. But you actually meant scaling automatically.

It sort of does that with the various 'tougher' zombies spawning more towards higher game stages but I get what you mean. That could be also adjusted to scale softer/tougher depending on a setting - if it were there.

On that I do agree. Apologies for misunderstanding your point.

It's fine, I think I could have clarified my own post a little more.
An example of this kind of setting that scales through the available difficulties is the doomRPG mod for Doom 2, there's a setting that will start directly from the lowest setting available and increase it as you progress, but in smaller increments, until it finally reaches the highest available setting. I think 7 Days to Die could use a setting like this but tweaked to fit accordingly.

[Nocternaldaze]

If playing single player just close the game at around 2am then reload it on horde night it resets the horde so you get extra waves of zombies on bloodmoon

[Umbreon™]

Originally posted by NocternalDaze:

If playing single player just close the game at around 2am then reload it on horde night it resets the horde so you get extra waves of zombies on bloodmoon

Uh... Alright. Not sure what that had to do with the topic, but you might as well just increase the zombie count per player in a bloodmoon so that there's more as a whole.

[Nocternaldaze]

Originally posted by Umbreon™:

Originally posted by NocternalDaze:

If playing single player just close the game at around 2am then reload it on horde night it resets the horde so you get extra waves of zombies on bloodmoon

Uh... Alright. Not sure what that had to do with the topic, but you might as well just increase the zombie count per player in a bloodmoon so that there's more as a whole.

It is to add further to the difficulty has you will get double the zombie horde because they stop at midnight but by closing the game and reloading it you get extra zombie waves which in turn increase your game stage further.

Edit :increases the game stage when you kill them even further.

[Umbreon™]

Originally posted by NocternalDaze:

Originally posted by Umbreon™:

Uh... Alright. Not sure what that had to do with the topic, but you might as well just increase the zombie count per player in a bloodmoon so that there's more as a whole.

It is to add further to the difficulty has you will get double the zombie horde because they stop at midnight but by closing the game and reloading it you get extra zombie waves which in turn increase your game stage further.

Edit :increases the game stage when you kill them even further.

Which is why it might be easier to just increase the zombie spawns per player in a blood moon in singleplayer, so long as you have a proper fort you'd do just fine with 12 zombies per player or something like that.

[Nocternaldaze]

Originally posted by Umbreon™:

Originally posted by NocternalDaze:

It is to add further to the difficulty has you will get double the zombie horde because they stop at midnight but by closing the game and reloading it you get extra zombie waves which in turn increase your game stage further.

Edit :increases the game stage when you kill them even further.

Which is why it might be easier to just increase the zombie spawns per player in a blood moon in singleplayer, so long as you have a proper fort you'd do just fine with 12 zombies per player or something like that.

Increasing zombie spawns would still work out the same because you could still quit game and have another fresh spawn of zombies to farm. And if you have a decent base with good defences it would not be a issue having 2 lots of hordes and game stage would double giving tougher zombies more so when wearing nerdy glasses that give extra xp for killing them.

[Umbreon™]

Originally posted by NocternalDaze:

Originally posted by Umbreon™:

Which is why it might be easier to just increase the zombie spawns per player in a blood moon in singleplayer, so long as you have a proper fort you'd do just fine with 12 zombies per player or something like that.

Increasing zombie spawns would still work out the same because you could still quit game and have another fresh spawn of zombies to farm. And if you have a decent base with good defences it would not be a issue having 2 lots of hordes and game stage would double giving tougher zombies more so when wearing nerdy glasses that give extra xp for killing them.

Alright, that's nice and all to try to bump the gamestages sooner, but it's not really the kind of thing this topic was for.

[Nocternaldaze]

Originally posted by Umbreon™:

Originally posted by NocternalDaze:

Increasing zombie spawns would still work out the same because you could still quit game and have another fresh spawn of zombies to farm. And if you have a decent base with good defences it would not be a issue having 2 lots of hordes and game stage would double giving tougher zombies more so when wearing nerdy glasses that give extra xp for killing them.

Alright, that's nice and all to try to bump the gamestages sooner, but it's not really the kind of thing this topic was for.

To be fair until they do and if they do add a setting for scaling this is probably the best fix for now to scale up the game stage for zombies.