New Player Experience + thoughts on Difficulty

[GL.L3gi]

Hey guys,

i just wanted to say two things:

- DLC as a new player
And im talking about the 3 star weapons and all the extras in crates!
Very Overwhelming experience as you just fastpass past the starting island even though you might not like to do so. Id really like you to implement an gameplay on/off for if you like to have the DLC Weapons and stuffpre spawn. Its just "weird" for new players.

- Enemy AI Capabilities / Difficulty
Ive played for some time now, ive played with friends, ive played alone. Im about 75% done with exploring the map and ive had a lot of encounters, and im not having any of the 6-star weapons.
I think it would be great if you could sit down and think about Difficulity. I really like the dark and fearing immersions aspect of the game, yet the opponents are sometime just too dumb for it. Im sometimes somewhat fearing an enocunter, planning it and executing it to actually get annoyed, and when the battles arrives its in the end just hardblasting the machines as much as you can with firepower as anything else is rarely working as you feel it should.

I feel like its too easy to stay alive without planning. The AI just just purely dumb and they just feel like meat you beat down, except for the very toughest opponents who then purely rely on insane dmg and not smart behaviour.

I should be able to execute an single opponent smartly as quickly as he can execute me if im not careful.


TLDR:
Get me an experience where i always fear an encounter i have not planned
Give me immersion of fearing to shoot my gun at all in some occations
Give me progression feeling in difficulty which is not just mulitpliers and make opponents smarter.
Maybe its possible to do a "nightmare" difficulty for exactly that. Which isnt just x2 HP and DMG factoring, but an insane TTK for both parties when ambushed correctly.


Also: Keep it up, this game has insane potential. I like what i see so far

[UCEY]

I just want the machines to deal less damage. I turned into a mummy during every fight

[🤪CrazyWolf🐺]

@Wazzock

Here is a quote for you. Bots render less damage in Adventure mode. The theoretical balance is the Skirmish mode.

Originally posted by ⛔️Don'tGetPlayed🏓Profile:

These elements change from Adventure to Guerrilla mode:
— Player infliction of damage to bot components and damage infliction to bot armor goes down by around 37% each [in guerrilla]
— Bot's infliction of damage goes up by around 25% [in guerrilla]
— Bot's vision, hearing and speed in creating rivals goes up by around 60%. [in guerrilla]

If you're on MP with scaling on, these changes are carried to 2, 3 or 4 players, so "it's like each player is fighting on single player difficulty". Without difficulty scaling, the MP session effectively becomes easier as the game thinks the session is set for one player when in fact there are four.

[Vin]

Originally posted by Wazzock:

I just want the machines to deal less damage. I turned into a mummy during every fight

its more of an issue with their accuracy and not damage. even when strafing you will take more hits on skirmish mode than in adventure. forget about guerilla accu is almost 100% and taking even 2 full burst from soviet machines is a down.

[UCEY]

Originally posted by Vin:

Originally posted by Wazzock:

I just want the machines to deal less damage. I turned into a mummy during every fight

its more of an issue with their accuracy and not damage. even when strafing you will take more hits on skirmish mode than in adventure. forget about guerilla accu is almost 100% and taking even 2 full burst from soviet machines is a down.

Their damage becomes a problem later on. It seemed like a single bullet took 50% of my health sometimes. We need more damage reduction options. 1, 2, or 3% bullet resistance doesn't cut it

[Vin]

Originally posted by Wazzock:

Originally posted by Vin:

its more of an issue with their accuracy and not damage. even when strafing you will take more hits on skirmish mode than in adventure. forget about guerilla accu is almost 100% and taking even 2 full burst from soviet machines is a down.

Their damage becomes a problem later on. It seemed like a single bullet took 50% of my health sometimes. We need more damage reduction options. 1, 2, or 3% bullet resistance doesn't cut it

there is a 25% damage reduction perk at the bottom of combat

Edit:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2893447844

[Vin]

Originally posted by Wazzock:

Originally posted by Vin:

its more of an issue with their accuracy and not damage. even when strafing you will take more hits on skirmish mode than in adventure. forget about guerilla accu is almost 100% and taking even 2 full burst from soviet machines is a down.

Their damage becomes a problem later on. It seemed like a single bullet took 50% of my health sometimes. We need more damage reduction options. 1, 2, or 3% bullet resistance doesn't cut it

again the accu is the problem. even if you dont yet have good damage reduction not being able to strafe shots because of aimbot means you get downed.

[🐱 carbinth 🐈]

Originally posted by Vin:

Originally posted by Wazzock:

I just want the machines to deal less damage. I turned into a mummy during every fight

its more of an issue with their accuracy and not damage. even when strafing you will take more hits on skirmish mode than in adventure. forget about guerilla accu is almost 100% and taking even 2 full burst from soviet machines is a down.

You seem to put more importance to accuracy than damage, so tell me how do you measure bots accuracy? Is it less important than damage?

[kamikazi21358]

Originally posted by L3gi:

Get me an experience where i always fear an encounter i have not planned
Give me immersion of fearing to shoot my gun at all in some occations
Give me progression feeling in difficulty which is not just mulitpliers and make opponents smarter.
Maybe its possible to do a "nightmare" difficulty for exactly that.

Yes please +1 (*10^9999)

I want to be afraid of fighting tanks without setting up mines and traps. Or actually consider smoke grenades a valuable tool rather than just something to be scrapped, because you need to outright retreat if attacked by a hoard. Or use the retention mechanic thing that machines never despawn and always keep their damage, so really tough enemies like rivals are so dangerous, guerrilla warfare is mandatory to ambush and hit it down and retreat, not just because it’s much harder to kill, but because perhaps it hits even harder or is more accurate, and maybe has some kind of escort spawn with it, idk but something like that.

I think it would be so much fun to have that gamemode, even guerrilla mode I’m pretty much running around blasting stuff because it’s not hard enough. It’s not because they’re not tough enough, they take quite a bit to kill (excluding .50 railgun that thing is just stupid), they don’t lead very well, they do a lot of damage but they probably could do more in a theoretical 4th mode, and being more aware in every aspect would be great. With a full stealth build, like you could probably beat the game by only killing the required machines, not because the big ones are too strong, but because you literally can crawl past their feet and they don’t know you’re there. Also perhaps maybe spawn rates or movement patterns could be affected, not necessarily with large machines, but imagine like seeing a convoy of a couple tanks and harvesters like you sometimes can do in an open field, but they’re guarded by like 100 runners and you’re actually in a situation where even late game you go ‘nope I’m not fighting that’.



I don’t want to TL;DR rant, but it would be pretty nice if they considered a 4th gamemode. Something that would never become easy, I like games that have a hardest difficulty that never feels like it becomes easy mode (and not by just making the enemies tougher+more damage only). Like a hard gamemode for players who maybe sometimes like to run and gun, but mostly want to sneak around and ambush enemies. While for other players, like a challenge mode where you try to run through the game, and the mere existence of the gamemode is a challenge in itself. It would be pretty funny to see players who run killing stuff in skirmish and then do a challenge and see if they can beat the game in some kind of nightmare difficulty. But I think it would be fun regardless, if it’s a gamemode you want to play often or play just as a challenge, a 4th optional difficulty would add to the game imo.
Especially as they make weapons, ammunition, and medpacks more powerful - perhaps it also could have higher rewards or something in terms of raw resources, but even just trying to take on a couple tanks of something is suffering if head-on? Guerrilla difficulty is fun imo, and I probably would still play it when I am in the mood to run around and shoot stuff, but it lacks the ‘guerrilla’ part of it.





Addition: since damage was mentioned, it wouldn’t be ‘required’ for a new mode but perhaps some areas could be given a bit more rugged terrain, so there is more cover. Since guerrilla difficulty, the damage actually is pretty good, for a higher difficulty I assume that pretty much every machine can 1-burst you if not 1-shot you with larger weapons (you can’t be 1-shot in game at all I think, outside of the thermobaric blast, at least with even just a couple health upgrades + no damage reduction buffs), (presuming they make hunters stop sniping you through walls and solid objects). Although one thing I noticed, I think the biggest thing is damage drop off seems to be very high. A machine obliterated you at close range, but at ‘long’ range it clips you for a few damage. Imo, I think damage drop off should be minor, maybe only runners and player’s lighter weapons have higher drop off. But I think autocannons and stuff should pretty much ignore damage drop off at the < 300-400m absolute max range they shoot back at you (side note, higher render distance to lure machines / fight them would be terrifying in a new gamemode), like autocannons are designed to shoot 1km+ accurately. The damage drop off also is my side theory why Firebirds take forever to kill without a rocket launcher (since they should ignore distance) or the magic .50 railgun, while the spetznaz firebird on guerrilla difficulty can’t even do enough damage to kill a standing still player in a full burst. It seems like most of the weapons lose like 90% of their energy when the enemy is over 200m away.

I can never not just write a short post, can I?
TL;DR — it would be fun if generation zero had a horror game difficulty.

[kamikazi21358]

Originally posted by carbinth:

Originally posted by Vin:

its more of an issue with their accuracy and not damage. even when strafing you will take more hits on skirmish mode than in adventure. forget about guerilla accu is almost 100% and taking even 2 full burst from soviet machines is a down.

You seem to put more importance to accuracy than damage, so tell me how do you measure bots accuracy? Why is it less important than damage?

(Using the Tank’s autocannon as an example)

In skirmish difficulty, you can pretty much sprint when a tank fires at you at any distance, and it will not hit you, or maybe clip you 1-2 times, but if you have the speed upgrades you are untouchable when fighting a single enemy in an open field.
In guerrilla difficulty, even with full speed upgrades doing this is required just to survive, you’ll probably lose half your health or more from the bullets that clip you. Like you have to be in cover or some circumstance that the tank happens to miss all it’s shots somehow. If you fight in guerrilla difficulty, you can’t really run around in an open field if a tank is involved in a fight, until you knock off it’s machine gun.

I can’t speak on adventure I haven’t really played it. (But no disrespect to players who prefer adventure.) But the accuracy is important because it doesn’t matter what the damage is if all the bullets miss. The tank’s autocannon, the wolf’s Gatling gun, and the military hunter’s arm autocannon, I find are the deadliest weapons in guerrilla, because you need to knock them out or you can’t be out in the open, because they do have the damage to kill you 5 times over, but they’ll also hit you so much that they’ll do the necessary damage, or at least will leave you at really low health.

[🐱 carbinth 🐈]

Originally posted by L3gi:

TLDR:
Get me an experience where i always fear an encounter i have not planned
Give me immersion of fearing to shoot my gun at all in some occations
Give me progression feeling in difficulty which is not just mulitpliers and make opponents smarter.
Maybe its possible to do a "nightmare" difficulty for exactly that. Which isnt just x2 HP and DMG factoring, but an insane TTK for both parties when ambushed correctly.


Also: Keep it up, this game has insane potential. I like what i see so far

This was done in April 2020, which apparently happened because the bugs (glitches) affected the intended ramping up of the game's existing difficulty level. Most players complained at that time because it became too hard. From that time on the game's difficulty levels have remained more or less the same, except for accidental swing once in a while.

Now if you want extra-difficulty "Nightmare" level don't expect the devs to do it. Make a request at nexusmods. It can even tailor the difficulty to your satisfaction. Otherwise, it will remain a wish.

Back in April 2020, players have offered the solution, asking the devs to make the higher difficulty into another level, say, Insanity, instead of rolling it back. They rolled it back.

[🐱 carbinth 🐈]

Originally posted by kamikazi21358:

Originally posted by carbinth:

You seem to put more importance to accuracy than damage, so tell me how do you measure bots accuracy? Why is it less important than damage?

(Using the Tank’s autocannon as an example)

In skirmish difficulty, you can pretty much sprint when a tank fires at you at any distance, and it will not hit you, or maybe clip you 1-2 times, but if you have the speed upgrades you are untouchable when fighting a single enemy in an open field.
In guerrilla difficulty, even with full speed upgrades doing this is required just to survive, you’ll probably lose half your health or more from the bullets that clip you. Like you have to be in cover or some circumstance that the tank happens to miss all it’s shots somehow. If you fight in guerrilla difficulty, you can’t really run around in an open field if a tank is involved in a fight, until you knock off it’s machine gun.

I can’t speak on adventure I haven’t really played it. (But no disrespect to players who prefer adventure.) But the accuracy is important because it doesn’t matter what the damage is if all the bullets miss. The tank’s autocannon, the wolf’s Gatling gun, and the military hunter’s arm autocannon, I find are the deadliest weapons in guerrilla, because you need to knock them out or you can’t be out in the open, because they do have the damage to kill you 5 times over, but they’ll also hit you so much that they’ll do the necessary damage, or at least will leave you at really low health.

Both are important at any difficulty as the difficulty levels were designed to suit different play level.