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Suggestion Practical Difficulty Adjustment

Discussion in 'MineZ' started by HellionX2, Apr 8, 2019.

Suggestion - Practical Difficulty Adjustment
  1. HellionX2 Emerald

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    89,273xp
    MineZ Zombie Difficulty adjustment idea:

    My goal and vision is to acquire a challenging game focused on zombie survival with difficult pve elements, while still fitting a theme that makes sense and is practical.

    Current Issues that don’t feel right in terms of theme:
    • Traveling to locations in MineZ is extremely easy, traversing forest and the space between locations is extremely easy
    • Looting northern towns with Iron is difficult not in a practical way, but in a senseless frustrating way. What I mean here is that an endless amount of zombies popping out of the wall randomly does not really make sense when viewing the game as a zombie apocalypse. Realistically zombies would be overrunning towns and occupying them before being taken back by the human adventurers.
    • With this in theme in mind it makes more sense for the danger to actually be partially In traveling to the locations, as well as when you first arrive.
    • Endless zombies and pigmen popping up behind you from spawners triggering non stop is not a fun way to implement difficulty because it leads to an anti fun - grindy environment that requires expending more resources than gained (hell tree and death mansion are perfect examples right now)
    • It makes more sense that an adventurer in MineZ would arrive at a dangerous northern overrun location, clear the difficult swarm of mobs and then reap the benefits of clearing the newly conquered town
    Suggested Solution
    • The solution I suggest is more of an adjustment rather than a straight “nerf” or “buff”
    • The suggestion is to making traversing wilderness and forests etc. more dangerous by adding more natural zombie spawns out in the wild between locations, even some locations that could spawn 5 - 8 zombie hoards in the wild. Maybe add some of these spawns on top of trees to actually making traveling to locations a factor of difficulty. This includes more pigmen natural spawns in the wild up north as well. Natural spawns are a healthier factor of difficulty because they allow for planning, as a traveler would when approaching the undead. Some situations call for lack of planning but not all the time in a way that creates senselessly getting beat on by zombies and chugging potions to get a few chests.
    • In turn the result would be reducing the amount of constant spawning VIA spawners in northern locations because pigmen spawners are impractical and nobody actually combats the mobs they simply avoid them meaning there is inherently something wrong with the difficulty strategy
    • Instead spawners could be set to a timer of 4 - 5 minutes and spawn a mass of zombies throughout the location upon entering the town, forcing you to clear the location in order to loot it, but then supplying a sense of accomplishment and giving time to breathe and loot. This creates a difficult but more fun environment. For larger towns this could mean maybe 5 and a pigmen occasionally zombies spawn in each building every few minutes meaning in order to loot the building you have to clear it out. Rather than having a pigmen smack you in the back due to it spawning every few seconds at a designated location.
    How this benefits the game

    1. Clearing a difficult town then getting a few minutes to rest can create a sense of accomplishment for new players and old players alike.
    2. One of the most rewarding parts of the game is getting to open a chest and feel proud of what you obtained, it is not fun to pop sugar break 5 chests and run out while simply avoiding the mobs. New players would not know to do this and it ruins the theme of clearing out the overrun locations.
    3. It opens up new ways to think about game balance and not simply making locations difficult by any means necessary but only using approaches that would fit the theme of a zombie apocalypse.
    IvanDoomy likes this.

  2. Tozzu Platinum

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    46,535xp

    I know i cant speak for everybody, but I think i can speak for a good amount of people. This isn't what many people want from the game, people don't want to clear a town of zombies to feel accomplished. Zombies were buffed in the past to make the game feel more difficult while fighting zombies, but players didn't like that. People want to gear up and do a dungeon, or fight. Even though the game wasn't meant to be a PvP and a dungeon crawling game, that's what it has become. You can try to stray away from that, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people enjoy these dungeons and the PvP. Fights cant happen if towns are full of Zombies, you cant properly gear up when you're constantly getting attacked by zombies. Exploring is pretty dead at this point, and that's mostly because every "secret" on the map has been found. Anybody can explore the map if they want to, there's nothing stopping them. You see the game from a pretty different standpoint then a lot of people.
    thomasun, cyclone_43 and Candere like this.
  3. HellionX2 Emerald

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    89,273xp
    Making the game actually good without pvp, doesn't prevent pvp from taking place in any way. It just requires a little more effort than 30 minutes to actually get iron. Also you seem to mis-understand me as this anti-pvp player. I was one of the leads in a clan that dominated the server pvp wise for years. So im not really sure how powerful of an argument "i speak for a lot of players is", because im also speaking for the newer players that I run into all the time that seem to be loving the game. youre speaking for a handful, and im speaking for a handful. The only difference is your solution makes the game boring and stale on its own without pvp, my solution allows pvp to remain while also making the game fun without pvp as well. You should read the post as well, im also discouraging the constant attack of zombies while you're actually looting.
  4. cyclone_43 Silver

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    68,995xp
    The definition of the game being good varies between people. The game in 2012 isn't what it is now in 2019. Things have changed, you can either accept them, or continue to say the game isn't what it used to be but reguardless the majority your ideas will most likely not affect the future of the game
    Tozzu likes this.
  5. HellionX2 Emerald

    XP:
    89,273xp
    Again, Im not sure you're reading. No where in the post do I say "the game isn't what is used to be". 2012 MineZ was actually much easier, and as you can see im advocating for the game to be difficult. I have acknowledged the game must change moving forward, and these posts are recommended changes to help achieve a better outcome in the future. So im not sure what you mean by "the majority of your ideas will most likely not affect the future of the game". Based off what? You really need to practice reading the content, and actually replying to the content of itself rather than just arguing for the sake of arguing. I never once stated that im trying to revert the game to what it used to be, these changes I suggested would be something not from the past but something new for moving forward. Please actually read my post if you intend to argue with me over it.
  6. cyclone_43 Silver

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    68,995xp
    What you want the game to be for the most part doesn't reflect what the majority of the community wants though
    Tozzu likes this.
  7. HellionX2 Emerald

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    89,273xp
    "majority of the community" that maybe comes out to be 5 people that you're getting that number from. If the goal is to grow the server catering to a sample size that can't even be officially considered a statistic is not really a good basis for discouraging change.
  8. cyclone_43 Silver

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    68,995xp
    Sample size is pretty much all of the clans and groups playing the game at the moment lol
  9. HellionX2 Emerald

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    89,273xp
    I'd like to see definitive proof of that, and also a confirmation that they chose you as their spokesperson to voice the interest of every clan and group playing at the moment.
  10. cyclone_43 Silver

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    68,995xp
    No need to make this a flame war, let's drop this
  11. _Silver Jr. Developer

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    280,702xp
    I choose Cyclone as spokesman on behalf of myself and the rest of the UTC ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

    Seriously though, it is an interesting idea to say the least, but I think it's a bigger suggestion than you realize, and one that wouldn't necessarily work in its current state (well, the way you suggested it). For starters, having towns full of zombies when you enter would require changes to the way zombie aggro currently works. If someone sprinted into a town, or for whatever reason needed to run away from some zombies they were attacking, this could lead to them being chased by an entire town of zombies at once. If you wanted to segregate zombie spawns to separate buildings, it would mean that now each building would have to be its own defined region, as opposed to just each town. Even then, all of this doesn't necessarily guarantee that players would actually fight the zombies instead of just running past them like usual; it just makes the timing of the threat different. Really, the only way you could make players actually fight zombies before looting is if chests didn't even spawn until the horde was cleared out. There's also the issue of suddenly getting jumped by a room/town of zombies if you didn't leave by the time the next wave was supposed to come.

    As far as traveling between locations goes, it is a bit easy, but at the same time, I don't think zombie hordes in forests are really what anybody wants. Ultimately, people are lazy and are many of them are going to be sprinting through forests trying to ignore zombie spawns and just get to the next location as fast as possible (especially if they died somewhere and want to get back quickly). Having even more zombies to deal with when traveling would at best just frustrate those who want to travel fast. Maybe it would be fine if zombies were slower or gave up chasing players earlier, but I think in the end, people are still going to try their hardest to ignore the zombies they pass unless they're forced to fight them.

    TL;DR: Changing the meta of a game is a huge task and isn't always received well.
    whoopiecow, cyclone_43 and HellionX2 like this.
  12. HellionX2 Emerald

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    I can see your point of view here, I agree that changing the meta of the game can be poorly received. The question I ask myself here is, is it better for the gaming moving forward? Maybe it isn't , or maybe it is. The direct suggestions I suggested I don't think are the only way to get to the solution. The main issue here in my opinion, is traveling and sprinting through locations offers no danger and should because it's an apocalypse setting. As well as that having zombie spawners being the only strategy used to adjust difficulty is not fun or rewarding because you just clear endless zombies.

    Im not suggesting changing how the system entirely works. Thank you for bringing that part of it to my attention. I was more explaining the idea behind how thematically the looting patterns at difficult situations doesn't make sense at the moment and just feels flat out bad. Maybe there doesn't have to specifically be zombie spawns put inside buildings and separate regions, but the current issue is that it's impossible in some locations to actually clear it THEN loot it. I feel that the reward of looting after clearing is a much better feeling than and endless onslaught by zombies popping out of a wall. (again maybe im wrong, maybe some players love being hit in the back and having their armor broken trying to loot). However, in the end I feel it would be a better experience for new players if difficulty was adjusted in a different way and I was simply providing a couple ideas I had. I know personally that If I knew zombies wouldn't endlessly spawn on top of me I would be more inclined to clear out a location rather than just run around. That may just be me though.

    Regarding this part of your reply "If someone sprinted into a town, or for whatever reason needed to run away from some zombies they were attacking, this could lead to them being chased by an entire town of zombies at once"
    Personally I see this as a good thing. I believe people should have to enter dangerous northern towns with caution, and if they choose to enter the town sprinting then they are well aware that they run the risk of attracting a lot of zombies as specified by the sound bar where experience is located in vanilla minecraft. This dynamic of the game is explained in the MineZ tutorial in the lobby.

    Do you have any potential ideas that would allow for the game to be more difficult while traveling and also make it possible to clear out locations to loot rather than having endless swarms spawn on top of you via spawners creating a miserable experience?
    _Silver likes this.
  13. HellionX2 Emerald

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    89,273xp
    No flame intended, I mean to point out that ambiguous arguments designed to shoot down my idea without context don't add any value to the discussion. It also makes it harder for me to evaluate my idea and see where it's flawed so it can be improved apon for the sake of the game. In theory the suggestion would reach the staff team in a better state than when originally posted through the discussion of players. If it's a horrible idea for the future of the game I would like to know why, not simply be told its a horrible idea because someone says so.
  14. cyclone_43 Silver

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    68,995xp
  15. _Silver Jr. Developer

    XP:
    280,702xp
    While I do kind of like the idea of being able to have a bit of down time to loot chests after fighting in a difficult area, I think for a lot of people the constant pressure and damage over time of spawners is part of the fun. You make the point of it being rewarding to clear out an area to get to the chests, and I think that's valid, but at the same time it's also rewarding for players to take one of these difficult areas with spawners and figure out how to survive there and loot most efficiently. I suppose if you did want to go more in the direction of clearing out zombies for loot in some places, one idea would be to just have an increased spawn rate in the location with a small area around the player in which zombies couldn't spawn. Even still, I think if you were going to have this increased level of zombies it would work better with reduced visibility.

    As for traveling between different locations being more difficult, this is a tricky one. I really wouldn't mind more zombies spawning along the way if traveling wasn't a chore already. A better way of getting around would be nice, but the problem is ideas like boats, horses, and elytras have already been shot down. When these things first appeared around the map and nobody knew what they were, a thought came to me that they might be portals of some sort. I knew that most likely wasn't going to be it, but still the thought that this major area of the game that makes it so dull would finally be getting improved was exciting to me. I don't really have any ideas on how to do travel better, but if it we want it to be made more difficult, it would be nice if it were more interesting first.
  16. HellionX2 Emerald

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    89,273xp
    Im glad that we agree looting after clearing can feel rewarding. I also agree that for some players clearing out difficult positions constantly can be part of the fun. So I would suggest balancing some areas in the way I suggest, places where its inpractical to fight spawners. Im talking places that are really tightly spaced, mostly death mansion and hell tree that I know of. while leaving other places like castle byesford a chaotic spawner area. Byesford also makes sense because it was an experimental lab in the lore so the constant onslaught of all the experiments makes sense. I think it's safe to blend the ideas together and different locations difficult in different ways. The main goal for me is to not have spawners being used as the only way to make some locations difficult, while It's clearly needed in others.

    As for traveling I personally think making traveling more efficient In a time manor is a difficult Idea because it would accelerate the natural pace of the game too much. As for making it more interesting theres a possibility quests will accomplish that. Maybe through the use of quests difficulty of traveling can be adjusted as well as adding new rewards for traveling to certain specified locations. Some sort of water traveling mechanic could be good, but it would have to be very slight because i personally dont like 2000 block swims.


    I'm glad that we have built apon the idea in a way that it could be realistic for the game.

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