Difficulty in this game is kinda stupid.

[markmywords800]

its kinda in the same vane as skyrim.

bigger number = more harder.

so a lot of the "difficulty" comes not from actual skill but from i guess "optimization" how good you are at numbers. builds and whatnot.

but it isn't really "harder". it just means instead of stabbing something in the face 5 times, i have to stab it in the face 25 times, which turns something from intense and fun, to annoying and tedious.

so ill join a server and the dif is like nomad or warrior, and instead of being fun and hard it just turns into me running around the same zombie smashing its face in with a hammer for like five minutes.

i dont mind other ways of difficulty such as move speed and number. turn it all the way up to nightmare across the board for all I care. but no one likes damage sponges.

[God Bless The Dead]

Insane isn't for everyone

[Casual Amateur]

Those was the days me keep whacking zombie on the head using a wooden club. It feel like 15 times though..... I think.... I remember breaking both arm and leg off and zombie just stuck laying there out of my pity amusement for not aiming for the head at all.

[Darren]

Thats because mostly difficulty is distinguished with annoyance lol. Just more HP is not more difficult (in most cases, it can be like its an Endboss or so). Also the Water changes that are discussed so hard here. Water is not more difficult now (Its even easier since you dont need to do anything for it after you get your collector, its almost like giving it yourself from creative mode limiting it to 3 per day lol) its just annoying and arcady.

If you want to increase difficulty properly by numbers theres a lot of more factors you have to increase. not only hp, but also other parameters like hunger and thirst drain and so on. And then some Things like less Daytime, less loot (Would be better to change some loot tables here). But we have a lot from that we can adjust by ourselves what is really great.

And now spice it up with some really difference like special "effects" - maybe different treatment needed for wounds or infections, give other zombies special abilitys or change spawnings etc. We should take much more damage or theres a need to some "one hit" abilitys also so you cant go out like rambo from now on and have to be more quite avoiding some of the Z's. That would give kind of a different gameplay and would be really intresting and newish feel to try that out.

[Mithrandir]

Like Darren said, the diff setting is just one setting amongst many to make the game harder for a player. We're far from Skyrim here as we get at least 10 settings you can set to make the game more challenging.

Loot respawn and %
Zombies speed
Block damage
What you'll drop on death (you can even delete backpack and belt for example)
Respawn on death (you can even play permadeath)
Air drops
POI respawn
Number of max daily quests
Day duration
Hunger, thirst rate
And more...

Diff is just one setting. And it's not just about spongy zeds like many like to claim. The zombies will also hit like trucks which is deadly and they rage a lot more.

I play only at survival nowadays, as I think they drop way too fast on lower diff, especially with higher tier weapons.

This game has the best system I've seen to adjust overall difficulty with so many settings. And then you have mods if it's not enough...

[markmywords800]

Originally posted by Mithrandir:

Like Darren said, the diff setting is just one setting amongst many to make the game harder for a player. We're far from Skyrim here as we get at least 10 settings you can set to make the game more challenging.

Loot respawn and %
Zombies speed
Block damage
What you'll drop on death (you can even delete backpack and belt for example)
Respawn on death (you can even play permadeath)
Air drops
POI respawn
Number of max daily quests
Day duration
Hunger, thirst rate
And more...

Diff is just one setting. And it's not just about spongy zeds like many like to claim. The zombies will also hit like trucks which is deadly and they rage a lot more.

I play only at survival nowadays, as I think they drop way too fast on lower diff, especially with higher tier weapons.

This game has the best system I've seen to adjust overall difficulty with so many settings. And then you have mods if it's not enough...

i strongly disagree, this games "difficulty" doesn't really go beyond two settings, speed and the actual difficulty setting. every thing else is nothing but RNG so instead of flipping a coine 5 times i now have to flip it 30 times, and hardcore aspects add no difficulty whatsoever, only punishment.

only one of speed and difficulty changes the way you play. that would be speed.

you cant just run away, you have to time your shots and have to kill a lot faster or get overwhelmed.

difficulty is literally just the Skyrim slider, makes zombies damage sponges and hit harder. which isnt really relevant. boring, tedious, unrealistic, ect. calling them damage sponges isn't a "claim" if i shoot a normal zombie point blank with a lvl 6 pump shotgun in the face and it doesn't die, that is objectively a damage sponge.

id rather deal with a bunch of nightmare speed zombies on adventurer which would be fun engaging and dynamic. that would be difficult, challenging and fun.

than a couple of insane difficulty zombies walking normally, which would be a boring slog of me slowly smacking them in the face. that is not difficult challenging or fun.

turning them both up to max would just be an entire game of trying to avoid "actual" combat, which would just be unfun in a game about killing zombies.

[SylenThunder]

The ONLY things "difficulty" changes are the amount of damage you deal to zombies, the amount of damage they do to you, and the % chance of them going into "rage mode" when taking damage.

I've been complaining about this for years. It's mostly just an hp slider to turn enemies into bullet sponges.

[xycotta]

Feral sense for increased difficulty. Adding speed is always helpful as well so you can't escape as easy.

We use insane to prevent people from clearing Tier 3 POis with a club on day one.

[0.01 KD]

insane difficulty - only for solo game

but for dedicated servers the best difficulty is warrior + jogging (day) + running (feral) + sprint (night)

But, speed is important. If zombie speed is walking then difficulty knight is not enough.

Now, most of dedicated servers are with mod (constant radiation, poison from smoke, bosses during night and DEADLY zombies even at tier 3 skull, if you are in other biome, except forest (hard to kill everything with club :-P)

[Alucard †]

I always mix things up now with the difficulty.

Like setting all zombies to insane run speed but play on like Nomad/Warrior

Or put Blood Moon every night and Insane difficulty zombies but their movement speed is set to walk and reduce block damage by half. (kind of slow but tanky and overwhelming amount of zombies vibe) - oh and Feral sense on too

You know experiment with combinations of the difficulty slider and other options that affect the difficulty.

[Macdallan]

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

The ONLY things "difficulty" changes are the amount of damage you deal to zombies, the amount of damage they do to you, and the % chance of them going into "rage mode" when taking damage.

I've been complaining about this for years. It's mostly just an hp slider to turn enemies into bullet sponges.

Personally I don't find bullet sponge enemies very fun or interesting.

Not having "rage" on a separate slider is also something I would like to see addressed. Maybe someone out there actually wants bullet sponge zeds but not zeds that rage all the time. Perhaps someone else wants very weak zombies that rage 80% of the time. With the current system we can't have either of those things. At the extremes it's either bullet sponge rage monsters or zombies with tiny hp pools that never react to taking damage at all.

[Invader Zim]

I enjoy playing the game as Fly Boy early game and by week 5 be more like Peter, just avoid confrontation till I gain the advantage.

[Amish]

insane is hard at first, but when you got second tier of weapons its way easier, me and my friends always play on the hardest difficulty, otherwise its way to easy

[xycotta]

Originally posted by Amish:

insane is hard at first, but when you got second tier of weapons its way easier, me and my friends always play on the hardest difficulty, otherwise its way to easy

Agreed, I would not even say 'hard' once you get used to it, though bikers hitting for half your health hurts,

Now, horde nights you end up going through 100+ grenades quite quickly mind you.

[markmywords800]

Originally posted by xycotta:

Feral sense for increased difficulty. Adding speed is always helpful as well so you can't escape as easy.

We use insane to prevent people from clearing Tier 3 POis with a club on day one.

see i "REALLY" dont like that, the speed is fine, but why are you Artificially jacking up the health of enemies to absurdly unrealistic standards and punishing everyone, because a couple of people are skillful and knowledgeable enough get through tough POIs early game.

[cnote261]

I think HP and damage scaling are very useful for people to make the sort of of zombie-fighting experience they're looking for; so I'm glad the slider exists. However, I wish the two weren't linked together on one slider! I'd love to fight zombies that go down relatively easy but hit like an absolute truck.

I just finished another Fortitude playthrough, smashing my way through hordes of zombies with nothing but steel fists and brass balls; but it started feeling a bit silly as I reached the endgame since Nomad difficulty just doesn't let zombies hit hard enough to represent a threat once you've got high armor, legendary effects, and max perks. I've done a Fortitude build before on Warrior and it was a slog, and I'm far from possessing the skill necessary to punch my way through the higher difficulties.

I'd love to see zombie damage and player damage made separate settings so I could craft something more like Fallout 4 Survival where I can't take many hits before dying, but neither can my enemies.