Instalar Steam
iniciar sesión
|
idioma
简体中文 (Chino simplificado)
繁體中文 (Chino tradicional)
日本語 (Japonés)
한국어 (Coreano)
ไทย (Tailandés)
български (Búlgaro)
Čeština (Checo)
Dansk (Danés)
Deutsch (Alemán)
English (Inglés)
Español - España
Ελληνικά (Griego)
Français (Francés)
Italiano
Bahasa Indonesia (indonesio)
Magyar (Húngaro)
Nederlands (Holandés)
Norsk (Noruego)
Polski (Polaco)
Português (Portugués de Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portugués - Brasil)
Română (Rumano)
Русский (Ruso)
Suomi (Finés)
Svenska (Sueco)
Türkçe (Turco)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamita)
Українська (Ucraniano)
Informar de un error de traducción
Normas y directrices sobre discusión
Denunciar este mensaje
The frontal execute w/Swordplay is not the most effective way to kill 5+ zombies at once. If you have a sharp enough sword, just slicing through them can be way quicker. It can also be much slower even if your sword is very sharp.
That's because the zombie heads have exactly 1 "hit point". Which means you are wrong about your assumption that what you're doing with your sword is "chipping away" at them. No weapons in the game do damage to regular zombies.
A bladed weapon has a chance of a lethal (critical) strike, which is what is required to kill a zombie. The higher the Lethality (including bonuses from Swordplay), the higher the critical chance. With a blunt weapon, Lethality is usually a pretty poor stat. The chance of a critical strike is low, so you need many attempts to get one. However, what blunt weapons often have a lot of is Knockdown. It works similarly as Lethality; each strike is a chance to knock the zombie down - each attempt totally independent of the last. The Striking skill gives a good bonus to knockdown for blunt weapons. The point of knocking them down is to be able to execute the zombies while they are lying down.
So bladed weapons you just click the strike button until you get lucky and instakill the zombie. Blunt weapons you click the strike button until you get lucky and knock the zombie down, then click the execute button to instakill them when they're down. A nice sideeffect of blunt weapons is to be able to hit more than one zombie at a time if they are close enough together. Heavy melee is even better at hitting multiple zombies, but you'll get no bonus to either Knockdown or Lethality - so each strike has a lower chance of doing both.
Using the most effective method isn't cheesing, its being efficient (at least in this context). If the devs didn't want us to chain together frontal executes they would have made the Stamina costs higher or gave them a cooldown. No game is perfectly balanced and there will always be a most preferred method no matter what the devs do, especially if you're asking "vets" who probably only play on the hardest difficulty.
Cheesing in this game would be using the High Jump Ledge Grab Trick to get to certain unintended spots in Heartland to be 100% safe while taking out Plague Walls. Those places are out of your reach otherwise.
Even I melee fight on Lethal all the time with and without Front Executes and I wouldn't consider myself top 10% at all, but I do know a lot about the game and I've put in the time. Hell, the most fun I have with Melee on Lethal is using Powerhouse and literally just doing the basic attacks with a Heavy Weapon and knocking stuff around. I can take on Hordes and even Plague Ferals (one at a time) with it. I'll take some chip damage for sure, but that's the trade off for not using Guns.
You shouldn't expect to consistently take out Hordes in Melee without taking damage, thats why we have an entire Resource dedicated to recovery (Meds) and we have Healing Items and the Infirmary/Hospital and things. However, theres also plenty of things you can do to minimize the damage you do take and its not just spamming frontal executes.
I do go for swordplay on some characters, but it's for coolness factor more than anything else.
I feel you've both missed the important part of my main argument. There is an entire set of game mechanics in regard to fighting. The fighting SYSTEM is comprised of a lot of different mechanics. My point is that out of, let's say 30, only 1 or 2 are used by most player most of the time. That's ... why I'm saying it's "cheesing" those two mechanics. It might not be the most direct and simple correlation but I'm pretty sure I'm not completely in the corn field either.
I get it though, if you guys think that calling this cheese is exaggerated I'll bow down.
Still, my point stand. Why did the devs develop all those cool mechanics and then balance the game in such a way that people go around ignoring most of them ? The combat system in this game is a MESS. A huge, ugly, mess. I've played enough by now to be certain of that. I will still play SoD 2 and engage with the combat system but it's sad that the whole thing's so messy. They went to the trouble of adding weapon specialization and a ton of cool weapons for each category then they ruined it all by making melee almost useless and went on to encourage player to only do one or two things all the time. Why, just why ? The simplest answer is to conclude that the devs probably failed at properly tuning the system the way they might have initially wanted it to go and we ended up with that mess.
@Protectron
I recognize that you know the meta and how it works. I do too BTW. I've done my own research to compensate for the fact that I'm new to SoD 2. Bottom line is, I'm simply pointing out the game contradiction in regard to it's fighting system. It works as intended with 5 Z and less but once you go past that... all of a sudden, everything you've learned isn't useful anymore and most of those "alternatives" simply stop working. You end up interacting with a completely different combat system. So weird. It's the first game I've played that has such a shift because the number of opponents increases. Most of the time, instead, the combat system will "build up" upon your previous experiences and add new mechanics or moves or options on top. Not switch to an entirely different thing. A good example is (if I remember correctly) Batman: The Dark Knight which has a deep combat system that evolve and end up being quite complex at the end but the simple moves you learn early on are still useful and part of your routine even at the end. Of course, in addition of all the special moves and combo you've unlocked.
@Scorp721
Of course no game's perfect... that's fine, I never argued with that, only debated the very specific point of the combat system. The most effective way, from a competing player perspective, yes it does make a lot of sense. It's the kind of stuff they usually say. I don't mind conceding you the point. As I explained above, I don't think I'm 100% wrong but I'm not 100% right either ;). The fact that the execute stamina cost is equal to a normal swing is, in itself, a proof that the devs gave up at some point and decided to make that a crutch to keep their combat system functional in both instances (5 and less Zs versus 5 and more Zs). I appreciate the feedback. It's interesting to see from an experienced player perspective. It's obvious enough that you're skilled and know what you're doing. You've adapted to the game restrictions and surmounted them well.
Conclusion
All in all, I'm just sad to see the weird frankenstein combat system we have here. It was so promising early on.... and fell apart quickly once the difficulty picked up and became complex. Fighting a feral one on one in melee is amazing. The feral adapt, change his attack patterns a lot, dodge well .... overall, it's the biggest challenge you can get out of this game combat system. Killing a juggernaut is more of a patience test. It takes a while but it isn't hard. Attack twice, dodge, rinse and repeat until he stop moving. It can easily be done with 0 health lost. I'm merely lamenting what could have been that will never be. I'll still be playing the game but I'm much less interested in the combat system now. No point in mastering it too much. Simply whip out a crossbow or a firearm and bypass the whole thing. No point in dealing with all the shortcomings.
I do agree with you on the Swordplay backspin though, its useless as a fighting mechanic and was probably only put in for 'coolness factor' but it's slow and leaves you open for too long. Other than that, the only thing that really feels bad about combat to me is basic attacks with Close Combat and forced camera closeups during executes. You have a tiny little knife yet you attack slower with it than you do with a blade or blunt weapon while both of those weapons out range it and blunt has cleave. The forced closeups also make it very hard to see your surroundings during combat.
As far as Striking, Powerhouse, and Swordplay, they're all viable without having to spam executes, it might be a bit slower, but its not bad or weak or anything. You just have to use the environment more as the hordes get bigger and you might have to dodge more or run a bit to get some space but its perfectly doable once you get used to it. Sure, almost everything in the game dies in one headshot from a piddly .22 pistol, but that doesn't mean you can't run in and smash some heads if you really want.
An I iz pretty expert, an soloed my fair share of juggys, an all weapons except heavy, seem pretty useless, especially when the juggys fist's and roars draw in Z's... On normal, that's not too much of a issue, on Dread=Dead. WHY o why would u purposefully draw Z's towards you?
The result can only be a cascading failure( in other words "overwhelmed") as I said wait till you try Dread, before deciding on it being "cheesing"
It's just possible, we know summit U don't
Hmm, I got a better idea of what you mean now. No the combat system isn't deep at all. Not like Dragon's Dogma or some fighting games that are focused a lot on that. You basically mash the attack button most of the time, and then you unlock first a basic special move, then when maxed out another special move. That's it. There isn't even a difference between 1 star and 6 stars, grey or yellow.
So we agree on that one - it could definitely be expanded upon, allowing more player skill.
But it's simply not true that most people spam one attack. I make my communities having all 4 fighting skills spread evenly, and several different builds around that - because I want to "personalize" the otherwise anonymous NPC survivors. This means that most of the time I play with non-specialized and non-maxed-out characters. And as I said earlier, the frontal execute with Swordplay is not the most efficient way of killing hordes. It is easy and convenient, yes, but the right blade makes it faster to just slice through them.
@Scorp721
While I agree everyone's free to play however they want I want to point out that that's human psychology at play here. By default, most people who start to play a game will consider themselves new to the experience and will strive to learn what they need in order to be "good". What exactly good is can be debated really and is subjective to every individual. Still, that's what they do. Yes, there's a few that go in for the lulz and don't care. That is a minority. I'm well aware that there's always exception to any rule. To be clear, I'm talking about the majority here.
In the other hand, the devs create a mechanic for the players to use. It's a way for them to interact with the world they're about to enter. So it only make sense that the players will experience that mechanic and figure out the best way to use it.
In combination, it makes people go toward the most efficient way. A good example is WoW and the fact that if you don't have your DPS meter, your One hit attack Boss Warning, and all the others mods plus your DPS being sufficient for your class and being aware of the dungeon steps and mistakes to avoid you'll simply get kicked out of the raid / heroic on the spot. It can be debated again that not everyone does that but most do. It's commonly accepted that you need to have done your homework before you try to get into a group. That's what I'm talking about.
Therefore, it's the devs responsibility to create a good fighting system that will work well, be enjoyable and offer the players gameplay diversity. At this point, we're talking about good game design and principles. So yes, while you can ignore the best way to do things and go play however you want it still doesn't change the fact that the game itself, through it's mechanics, is telling you how you should play. It's doing so through the weapon degradation system or the medical system as you lose health or the stamina system as you need to stop to replenish it or pop consumables to add some regen. The game's always talking to players through it's myriad of systems. Teaching them how to do this or that.
In conclusion, the current fighting system is simply not working very well. It's counter intuitive and doesn't reward players for playing right. Instead, it encourages them to cheese the system and even, in some cases, to avoid it altogether as using guns is simply that much more efficient / less of a headache. That's the bit that I find hard to swallow. Such a waste. It would be a million times better if the firearm system would complement the fighting system and ends up making the whole exponentially better.
@worm_master
I haven't found any silenced shotgun so far. You've made me curious about that. I guess it's some reward weapon or has to be unlocked through Daybreak or something.... I wouldn't be surprised at all.
As for the Juggernaut, considering the game, I doubt they've made significant changes to their AI behaviour on harder difficulties. Meaning that the only way what you're saying can be true is because they've pumped their HP stats to the stratosphere. Yes, it takes a while on norm to kill one but it can be done with 0 damage as a test of patience. I'm pretty sure the same can be done on higher difficulty but yes, they can aggro the surrounding Zs. Then it's just a matter of killing them before engaging the Juggernaut. I think there's also a blatant mechanic that automatically spawn one Z at regular interval for as long as you'll fight the Juggernaut. I mean, that's a pretty dumb way to piss off your players. On one hand, it doesn't make any sense and on the other it completely negate the efforts that a careful player would make to clear the surroundings before engaging the main threat. Why would any Devs do that is beyond me. Just like they spawn Zs right behind you all the time. Turn around and heh, who would have guessed, there's a new horde right where I came from 2 sec ago. As far as I'm concerned, that's one of the worst way you can artificially increase difficulty. Devs should strive not to take control away from their players because that's when people start to call bulls**t. Even more so when it's that obvious.
Anyway, I don't disagree with you. Juggernaut are a waste to kill. You're spending a lot of resources for nothing. They're best avoided in the first place. I've heard they're a good source of plague sample on higher diff so maybe there's that reason. Most streamers I've seen avoid them until they can pop them with 5 rounds of a 50 cal which brings us back to the meta or the most effective way people tend to naturally go toward.
I'm fully aware that people like you who play on those higher difficulties have experienced things I've yet to see. I don't deny that. Still, as long as the game mechanics stay the same, my arguments aren't affected.
-----
Aiiight, I've been writing for too long I'm going to stop here. I'm glad we agree on most things. I might have a slightly different view of some things but that's mostly because I believe I know more about what's going on under the hood having experience in both competitive gaming and the IT world. It makes all those little things stands out to me. It's really easy to see where the devs have skipped corners or where the game try to do some misdirection to hide flaws.
Works for all kinds of games, I guess.
For hordes or large numbers of zombies aggroing at the same time so that they're close together, Swordplay attack button mashing and Heavy Melee makes it no big deal at all. Shooting is preferable on Nightmare and Lethal, though, because it reduces the chance of zombies roaring and therefore drawing on or spawning more zombies.
For when the zombies come at you one-by-one (ish), Swordplay, Close Combat and Powerhouse frontal execute are of course nice, but -anything- works in those conditions. High-knockdown Striking with or without the special attack make you go bonk>whack very efficiently. The same goes for Endurance when you use RTX Crusher and the like; the bonking is usually almost as effective as a Striking character, but the whacking is not because the Execution animations for Endurance>blunt is inferior.