Any reason to play Lethal?

[Swato85]

Just like the headings says. What is the point. I find the game on this difficulty simply being veeeeeeeery slow, extremely tiresome and Time-Heavy (costy). Every plan needs so much time, just because the constant pop ups - I dont know but its like going to some unsafe site (website) with lost of adds popping again and again and again untill you lose interest because you can not read what you were interested in the first place. The game could use some ZOMBIE ADD BLOCKER :-) aka ZAD. We need Z.A.D.! I hate it when the challenge is simply in spam of quantities/HPs/extra DMG for enemies instead of something that would actualy have anykind of improved concept, new logic and similar. Really people, please give me a reason why to play a mode thats basicaly just a time sponge?

[Protectron]

It's the only one that gives you a challenge after a while. Since this is a zombie apocalypse survival open world action game, I, at least, need to have it being dangerous and unforgiving of mistakes.

I don't like the cascading spawning-in of zombies because every zombie is a Screamer, though. I think they should have increased the difficulty in different ways - like for instance regular zombies being more about dragging you down and piling up on you, and no passive healing of injuries and Plague (must use infirmary bed). No permanent healing from Painkillers. Stuff like that.

But a workaround of those cascading endless spawns is to park the car with the front touching the building so that zombies don't climb onto it, then run inside and explore the whole building while dodging the zombies spawning in. Once the house is fully explored, run out again, get into the car and smash them with the rear until they're all dead. Run inside again and kill any sleepers or stragglers, and the house is now a safe zone. Should take a couple of minutes, tops.

If you don't do it this way or in equally effective ways, progress will slow down to a crawl and any looted site is a net loss in terms of resources. For instance, if you just used 45 7.62 bullets to grab a rucksack of Ammo, you ended up with a net loss of Energy Drinks, Painkillers, Parts and Gas Cans.

[Swato85]

Thanks for the feedback mate. Though it does not motivate, just proves that the mode is not challenging just tiresome. So many years of game industry and still the main thing how to increase the difficulty is to increases enemy numbers or cheatboost their stats. Well it is game of the brain hungry and brainless, but still, its not that hard to implement rational challenges instead of mobdrops.

[take tome as core I feed]

Is nightmare the sweetspot in terms of difficulty, then?

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Kevin Sorbo as Hercules:

Is nightmare the sweetspot in terms of difficulty, then?

I dont know. I jumped from the dread directly into lethal and this level is just time consuming. Doing anything costs you a lot of time, because of how many turns (point-return,point-return,....) you need to make for resources, while constantly being zombiebombed around you AND literaly on top of you (no chance to avoid conflict at that point) - I am not usualy an angry guy, but the logics here are childlishly simple (and there I was thinkng that the radio request swarm is unbelieavable, turning other survivors hostile just because you have your schedule full - in relation to this, why the hell is just one unit from the whole settlement doing jobs while all others do literaly nothing the whole time - hugely dumb logic, nowhere near survival aspects). I really hope that the game or its future followups get mods support so that someone can put a heart into it and do it right (and thats said by a guy who does not like mods). Take into account the bugs and AI which does not really have an AI (letting themselves killed because though they are fully geared with good guns, they prefer to fight freak swarms in melee and similar jokes - so you can have a very bad - not funny moments quite quickly. Though my guys were g(l)orrefied on purpose in relation to some celebration/support or whatnot that is going on ingame. So I let them shine :-) like a zombielunch and tested out the enemy strength at the same time. Like sometimes it feels that melee combat is neverending due to constant. zombiebombs.It makes me feel as if the swing of the weapon was making gunshot sounds or something. ..magic things happening here.

[Swato85]

Like really, I just want to have interesting challenge and fun and not to just sunk hours into boring basic tasks. Hard to believe that somebody actualy thinks that this is a difficulty slider (slow, boring, repetetive while at the same time completely basic tasks...lol). Its not a problem to need to acquire more resources and such, but being slowed down by a cheap brainless "freak and zombie" rains (reference to when it "rains cats and dogs") and losing lots of time completely unnecessary. I made an experiment even: I cleared an urban area and the slided my mouse from one side of the desk to another, just simulate the repetive looking around 360° and when it stopped I had 16 zombies around me, 16!!!! 16 zombies spawned into a cleared area just because of (looking the other way for a moment). No comment.

[Protectron]

Well to be fair - buildings that have only one "dot" to explore are usually empty. Those who do have more than one such minimap-dot don't always spawn in endless streams of zombies either. I think there's a higher chance of that at night. Once you have a silenced assault rifle/SMG and have started producing ammo for it and have the parts to repair it, you can glance at the minimap and immediately tell if there are too many of them to avoid one of them from screaming and if there are reinforcements coming or not. When I'm at that point of the game (moved on from Crossbows) I more often stand and fight because then I can kill a handful of them silently before they call in more.

As for Nightmare, it also reveals the limitations of the physics engine and AI. Just not as severely as Lethal. The cascading happens there as well, just slightly less often. The NPCs are still as helpless. The zombies are still running straight past shotgun-blasting NPCs to get at you on the other side of the room.

The fact that the game was made based on Normal difficulty becomes obvious even on Dread.

[Fenris]

you need a reason to play lethal? seriously? ok, the other modes are easy. there.

no but really. if you can't surmise why people are bored of nightmare/dread you must not be learning how to play the game. there are a million ways to make this game easy. once you play for 100+ hours you learn all the flaws the AI has and learn about what is "meta". After that point you start doing those things and the game becomes stupid easy. ALSO, since the game has no real core objective outside of just killing things, perhaps most lethal players just enjoy the slow grind? I mean what else is SoD if not a slow grind? It's certainly not a race to kill PH. Killing PH isn't really fun it's just a unique challenge the game has.

Also referring to your reply to protectron about the 'cheat way' to increase difficulty: that is like the most cost effective way to do it. Creating new AI strategies for higher difficulties is something no game does and for good reason; it's way too expensive and creates a plethora of bugs. SoD doesn't even make the baddies "harder" really, basically everything dies with a headshot. Jugs are the only exception and like any seasoned SoD player would tell you jugs are not hard to deal with. It's the ferals and bloaters that will kill your favorite survivors. So yea your criticism about the 'cheat way' to increase difficulties is completely invalid and stupid. People CRAVE more zombies in zombie apocalypse games.

Also, lastly, the entire premise of the hardest mode in any game is to challenge the dedicated player base. If you're not a dedicated player who has been with the game for a long time, then wtf are you doing complaining about the hardest difficulty for? Just go play on normal. You either enjoy the challenge and don't need to ask the question, or don't enjoy the challenge and belong on easy mode.

[Urah]

Truth is Lethal is the mode that has made the game less tiresome.

I am grateful I started all maps on Dread, and jumped to Nightmare. Then Lethal.

In Lethal mode you barely explore houses, since 90% of them are empty. That makes the game much more dynamic and much less hoarder.

The thing is, it is sometimes extremely dynamic, and sometimes the noise you make opening a simple door can lead to a total chaos.
Seriously.

You learn to run, to stealth-run while praying, to climb whatever you find or jump walls and walls to leave behind a massive amount of zombies and freaks.

Managing the base becomes much more serious and difficult. I never ever had to call a Locate Goods radio call on lower difficulties. Now you face starvation or total lack of fuel, or meds, or ammo, much more frequently. You count your explosives and you don't waste a molotov without thinking about saving it for a Plague Heart.
It's much more fun, to be honest.

TL;DR: it IS extremely fun, but only when Nightmare mode becomes a bit boring.
And it is much better to learn the maps on lower difficulties.

[Jack Burton]

Isn't lethal the only way to enable the plague-infected ferals?

That's my main issue with Nightmare; no plague ferals.

Otherwise, indeed the spamming of the zombies & outright spawning of things on top of you gets tiresome on lethal. one missed swing, & as pointed out "every zombie is a screamer", the instant pop ins of plague bloaters ad-nauseum. Not cool.

I've managed one win on Lethal. Nine+ "restarts" when a non red-shirt died. So...nine losses to one win, & that's not even ON lethal to be clear, it's on custom with only the zombie-bar set to lethal.

Pretty lame to know you're about to die as three plague ferals move into view at mach 4 after the one you JUST managed to kill torched your only ride home..

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Urah:

Truth is Lethal is the mode that has made the game less tiresome.

I am grateful I started all maps on Dread, and jumped to Nightmare. Then Lethal.

In Lethal mode you barely explore houses, since 90% of them are empty. That makes the game much more dynamic and much less hoarder.

The thing is, it is sometimes extremely dynamic, and sometimes the noise you make opening a simple door can lead to a total chaos.
Seriously.

You learn to run, to stealth-run while praying, to climb whatever you find or jump walls and walls to leave behind a massive amount of zombies and freaks.

Managing the base becomes much more serious and difficult. I never ever had to call a Locate Goods radio call on lower difficulties. Now you face starvation or total lack of fuel, or meds, or ammo, much more frequently. You count your explosives and you don't waste a molotov without thinking about saving it for a Plague Heart.
It's much more fun, to be honest.

TL;DR: it IS extremely fun, but only when Nightmare mode becomes a bit boring.
And it is much better to learn the maps on lower difficulties.

Thanks man a nice objective review. With this taken into account the main issue of mine is apparently the time sponge. Being a working family man i dont have as much time to dedicate to "excessive" run arounds and threat avoding/dealing tactics that is needed in this mode a lot more than in others. Plus the extra time for dealing with critical situations caused by bugs - like the instant nuke bomb spawn on top of you that happens occasionaly.

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Fenris:

you need a reason to play lethal? seriously? ok, the other modes are easy. there.

no but really. if you can't surmise why people are bored of nightmare/dread you must not be learning how to play the game. there are a million ways to make this game easy. once you play for 100+ hours you learn all the flaws the AI has and learn about what is "meta". After that point you start doing those things and the game becomes stupid easy. ALSO, since the game has no real core objective outside of just killing things, perhaps most lethal players just enjoy the slow grind? I mean what else is SoD if not a slow grind? It's certainly not a race to kill PH. Killing PH isn't really fun it's just a unique challenge the game has.

Also referring to your reply to protectron about the 'cheat way' to increase difficulty: that is like the most cost effective way to do it. Creating new AI strategies for higher difficulties is something no game does and for good reason; it's way too expensive and creates a plethora of bugs. SoD doesn't even make the baddies "harder" really, basically everything dies with a headshot. Jugs are the only exception and like any seasoned SoD player would tell you jugs are not hard to deal with. It's the ferals and bloaters that will kill your favorite survivors. So yea your criticism about the 'cheat way' to increase difficulties is completely invalid and stupid. People CRAVE more zombies in zombie apocalypse games.

Also, lastly, the entire premise of the hardest mode in any game is to challenge the dedicated player base. If you're not a dedicated player who has been with the game for a long time, then wtf are you doing complaining about the hardest difficulty for? Just go play on normal. You either enjoy the challenge and don't need to ask the question, or don't enjoy the challenge and belong on easy mode.

Sorry kid, aint gona take your rage repply into account. Its not helpfull, your "simple" repplies and insults can be negated by simply quoting a other threads who already analysed a proved the oposite. You like it, its good for you? Doesnt matter if its true, if you are paid for it or just posing because of having nothing to do, Great, enjoy it! I asked fellow veterans (yes kid, since SoD1 before pc version) for their motivation and inspiration as the mode is challenging mainly ma playTIME possibilities. Really, you should go for lower difficulties to calm down a bit as you are obviously too stressed out.

[Karf]

Originally posted by Fenris:

Creating new AI strategies for higher difficulties is something no game does and for good reason; it's way too expensive and creates a plethora of bugs.

Thats not entirely true. While I know of no game which does this, some games choose to simply disable various behaviour routines for the AI on lower difficulties. They don't "improve" the higher difficulty AI but kind of cripple the lower tier one.

[Fenris]

Originally posted by Swato85:

Sorry kid, aint gona take your rage repply into account. Its not helpfull, your "simple" repplies and insults can be negated by simply quoting a other threads who already analysed a proved the oposite. You like it, its good for you? Doesnt matter if its true, if you are paid for it or just posing because of having nothing to do, Great, enjoy it! I asked fellow veterans (yes kid, since SoD1 before pc version) for their motivation and inspiration as the mode is challenging mainly ma playTIME possibilities. Really, you should go for lower difficulties to calm down a bit as you are obviously too stressed out.

nah dude I don't even play SoD anymore. It's just one of my fav games and I'll play an hour here or there when a weapons pack comes back or maybe I'll sink a bunch of hours in for a solid update, but seriously? You're complaining about the hardest difficulty in a game, when the game literally existed for YEARS before that new difficulty was added, and that difficulty was ONLY added AFTER massive requests from the dedicated player base.

You're just too cringe not to flame. Don't enjoy it? Don't play it. It's not rocket science. There isn't some weapons crate you only get on lethal or some divine inspiration you get that makes you want to get a PhD in SoD; you know this. you just made this sh1tpost to vent about how a game you bought is a time sink instead of thrilling on a difficulty that wasn't made for u. and then u bring ur family into it.... oooiii oiiii oiiii mayb go play with ur kids instead of replying to critcism ona sh1tpost u made to start with. oof

also this should be obvious, but in case it went over your head, there was a massive push for a higher difficulty setting for SoD2. Like it took a long time for us to get the harder difficulty. So when u ppl come on and whine about how it's not fun it's kinda selfish. There's legit 4 other game modes and like *64 permutation of possible difficulty settings excluding lethal. Just play something else and quit btchng.

[Obiwan]

wait till beta goes live - BIG changes coming!

[󠀡󠀡Kyle]

Originally posted by Obiwan:

wait till beta goes live - BIG changes coming!

Got a link?