[Zombie Survival] Balancing Log And Discussion

[->SK<-]

All discussion for the balance thread to be put here please

 

Changelog

 

04/09

 

Currently rebalancing the Pointshop to allow for more fun. Currently, the system works as follows :

 

Current Point Shop

 

[spoiler=Current Point Shop (DO NOT USE THIS)]Wave 1 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Sprayer' Uzi 9mm

'Shredder' SMG

'Bullet Storm' SMG

'Silencer' SMG

'Hunter' Rifle

'Reaper' UMP

'Ender' Automatic Shotgun

'Akbar' Assault Rifle

 

Wave 2 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Infiltrator' G3SG/1

'Stalker' Assault Rifle

'Inferno' Assault Rifle

'Annabelle' Rifle

'Pursuader' Assault Rifle

 

Wave 3 Intermission Unlocks (50% infliction rate):

 

'Eliminator' SIG SG552

'Impaler' Crossbow

'Annihilator' Sniper Rifle

'Sweeper' Shotgun

'Tiny' Slug Rifle

'Adonis' Pulse Rifle

Boom Stick

 

Wave 4 Intermission Unlocks (80% infliction rate):

 

'SG550' Automatic Sniper

'XM1014' Automatic Shotgun

'Destroyer' Sniper Rifle

Laser BoomStick

'Grim Reaper' Machine Gun

Preliminary, I've decided to make the following changes... (changes are in italic bold)

 

SKay's Preliminary Revised Point Shop

 

Wave 1 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Sprayer' Uzi 9mm

'Shredder' SMG

'Bullet Storm' SMG

'Silencer' SMG

'Hunter' Rifle

'Reaper' UMP

'Akbar' Assault Rifle

'Annabelle' Rifle

 

Wave 2 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Ender' Automatic Shotgun

'Stalker' Assault Rifle

'Inferno' Assault Rifle

'Pursuader' Assault Rifle

'Annihilator' Sniper Rifle

'Impaler' Crossbow

'Tiny' Slug Rifle

 

Wave 3 Intermission Unlocks (50% infliction rate):

 

'Infiltrator' G3SG/1

'Eliminator' SIG SG552

'Sweeper' Shotgun

'Adonis' Pulse Rifle

'Grim Reaper' Machine Gun

Boom Stick

 

Wave 4 Intermission Unlocks (80% infliction rate):

 

'SG550' Automatic Sniper

'XM1014' Automatic Shotgun

'Destroyer' Sniper Rifle

Laser Boom Stick

 

PLEASE NOTE : If you wish to suggest changes to the preliminary list, then copy paste and make your changes in RED.

 

PLEASE NOTE : This system is SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Please stop bitching.

 

PLEASE NOTE : THE WEAPONS WILL BE REBALANCED TO COINCIDE WITH THE POINTSHOP UPDATE. The weapons will change to coincide with their rejigged unlock.

[TheAtrocity]

Preliminary, I've decided to make the following changes... (changes are in italic bold)

 

SKay's Preliminary Revised Point Shop

 

Wave 1 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Sprayer' Uzi 9mm

'Shredder' SMG

'Bullet Storm' SMG

'Silencer' SMG

'Hunter' Rifle

'Reaper' UMP

'Akbar' Assault Rifle

'Annabelle' Rifle

'Ender automatic shotgun'

 

Wave 2 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Infiltrator' G3SG/1

'Stalker' Assault Rifle

'Inferno' Assault Rifle

'Pursuader' Assault Rifle

'Annihilator' Sniper Rifle

'tiny Slug rifle'

 

Wave 3 Intermission Unlocks (50% infliction rate):

 

'Eliminator' SIG SG552

'Sweeper' Shotgun

'Adonis' Pulse Rifle

Boom Stick

'destroyer' Sniper Rifle

 

Wave 4 Intermission Unlocks (80% infliction rate):

 

'SG550' Automatic Sniper

'XM1014' Automatic Shotgun

Laser Boom Stick

'Impaler crossbow'

grim Reaper machinCe gun, lower price

 

PLEASE NOTE : I'll bitch as much as I want boi some these changes are cringey.

 

EDIT:

 

Tiny Slug is basically a useless gun, as are all the SR's in most situations. Just unlock them earlier I guess im lazy to change it.

 

impaler, grim are crowd control, powerful guns.

for impaler, this is fine

for grim, either lower the price or buffer the damage........not both as was done last time(s).

 

ender is a shotgun do I need to explain it? it's a nice alt to akbar in case of gang up zombs.

Edited September 4, 2015 by TheAtrocity

[->SK<-]

Wave 1 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Sprayer' Uzi 9mm

'Shredder' SMG

'Bullet Storm' SMG

'Silencer' SMG

'Hunter' Rifle

'Reaper' UMP

'Ender' Automatic Shotgun

'Akbar' Assault Rifle

 

Wave 2 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Infiltrator' G3SG/1

'Stalker' Assault Rifle

'Inferno' Assault Rifle

'Annabelle' Rifle

'Pursuader' Assault Rifle

 

Wave 3 Intermission Unlocks (50% infliction rate):

 

'Eliminator' SIG SG552

'Annihilator' Sniper Rifle

'Sweeper' Shotgun

'Tiny' Slug Rifle

'Adonis' Pulse Rifle

Boom Stick

 

Wave 4 Intermission Unlocks (80% infliction rate):

 

'SG550' Automatic Sniper

'XM1014' Automatic Shotgun

'Destroyer' Sniper Rifle

Laser BoomStick

'Grim Reaper' Machine Gun

 

 

Preliminary, I've decided to make the following changes... (changes are in italic bold)

 

SKay's Preliminary Revised Point Shop

 

Wave 1 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Sprayer' Uzi 9mm

'Shredder' SMG

'Bullet Storm' SMG

'Silencer' SMG

'Hunter' Rifle

'Reaper' UMP

'Akbar' Assault Rifle

'Annabelle' Rifle

 

Wave 2 Intermission Unlocks:

 

'Ender' Automatic Shotgun

'Infiltrator' G3SG/1

'Stalker' Assault Rifle

'Inferno' Assault Rifle

'Pursuader' Assault Rifle

'Annihilator' Sniper Rifle

'Impaler' Crossbow

 

Wave 3 Intermission Unlocks (50% infliction rate):

 

'Eliminator' SIG SG552

'Sweeper' Shotgun

'Tiny' Slug Rifle

'Adonis' Pulse Rifle

'Grim Reaper' Machine Gun

Boom Stick

 

Wave 4 Intermission Unlocks (80% infliction rate):

 

'SG550' Automatic Sniper

'XM1014' Automatic Shotgun

'Destroyer' Sniper Rifle

Laser Boom Stick

'Impaler crossbow'

 

PLEASE NOTE : I'll bitch as much as I want boi some these changes are cringey.

 

Goddamnit.

 

Also no need to copy the original, it was just there as a guideline as to what it is currently. You also forgot to delete the old impaler crossbow entry

 

EDIT : Made OP much clearer on what to use.

[TheAtrocity]

I'm on my phone give me a break

[->SK<-]

I'm on my phone give me a break

 

No breaks. Not even a whiff of a break. YOU GOT A JOB TO DO SON.

 

okay now I'm just derailing my own thread. I should feel bad.

[TheAtrocity]

No breaks. Not even a whiff of a break. YOU GOT A JOB TO DO SON.

okay now I'm just derailing my own thread. I should feel bad.

 

Nope not at all

 

I'm just here to 'suggest' a better way of shit

 

I like to be edgy too

 

An example of a cringey change is lowering the suicide bomb to a mere 100 points

Edited September 4, 2015 by TheAtrocity

[->SK<-]

An example of a cringey change is lowering the suicide bomb to a mere 100 points

 

Not of my design choice. I will be looking at worth for weapons, ammo, others and everything under the pointshop sun after this rebalance is complete and the community speaks. Start suggesting some changes and I will incorporate them once we get round to that

[TheAtrocity]

I'll explain my proposed changes (and change more or less) when I actually get access to my laptop

[Matt B]

so just to make things a bit more clear, the wave 3 and wave 4 unlocks will be unlocked that wave 100% of the time, but can be unlocked sooner due to infliction %? looks okay to me.

 

the main thing is that wave 2 triple/double/single nightmare can pretty much beast through any cade. if there was already a decent # of people killed during wave 1, its gg unless humans have something to shoot zombies with. plus cades will be very vulnerable since there hasn't been much time. although i do see that the buff trait has decreased time to throw up stronger cades due to the ability to get high health props in good places. this is where maps with multiple layer cades shine, where maps with only a few cading spots and no fall back cades end rather quickly.

 

cading spots with multiple fall back cades can withstand the wave 2 nightmares and rebuild front buffers.

Edited September 4, 2015 by IMI4tth3w

[futo]

Instead of using tier system, I think a gun quantity control is better than what we are having right now.

 

It was yesterday in high school beta there was a big shit cade with large population of ~35 human, and my small good o' door cade with merely 6 people. The good one died first because we couldn't get anything better than akbar.

 

This got me thinking about how bad survivability can go when we don't have good guns to out weight the impact of small population.

 

 

Now there is an endless loop of argument about fun vs fairness: original is too much fun to be fair, new tier system is too fair to be fun they say.

So my idea is to maintain that small chunk of fun for that small boomstick/grim/adonis heavy users, or survivability those like me in that high school situation, while controlling the large normal users in the game; by using quantity and price control.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Details of suggestion:

1 purchase quota is added every round; every round early the weapon cost is increased by 50%

 

 

Illustrations:

Wave 1: +1 boomstick quota, 200% cost

Wave 2: +1 boomstick quota, 150% cost

Wave 3: unlimited quota by unlock, normal price

 

Wave 1: +1 grim quota, 250% cost

Wave 2: +1 grim quota, 200% cost

Wave 3: +1 grim quota, 150% cost

Wave 4: unlimited quota by unlock, normal price

 

Of course infliction will override that as well.

 

This should hopefully stop these too:

 

[Trazix]

reduce 80% to 65 or 70 no ? if there are 90 players you take 80% of human death 72+boss vs 18 we all death in 1min

[TheAtrocity]

Instead of using tier system, I think a gun quantity control is better than what we are having right now.

 

It was yesterday in high school beta there was a big shit cade with large population of ~35 human, and my small good o' door cade with merely 6 people. The good one died first because we couldn't get anything better than akbar.

 

This got me thinking about how bad survivability can go when we don't have good guns to out weight the impact of small population.

 

 

Now there is an endless loop of argument about fun vs fairness: original is too much fun to be fair, new tier system is too fair to be fun they say.

So my idea is to maintain that small chunk of fun for that small boomstick/grim/adonis heavy users, or survivability those like me in that high school situation, while controlling the large normal users in the game; by using quantity and price control.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Details of suggestion:

1 purchase quota is added every round; every round early the weapon cost is increased by 50%

 

 

Illustrations:

Wave 1: +1 boomstick quota, 200% cost

Wave 2: +1 boomstick quota, 150% cost

Wave 3: unlimited quota by unlock, normal price

 

Wave 1: +1 grim quota, 250% cost

Wave 2: +1 grim quota, 200% cost

Wave 3: +1 grim quota, 150% cost

Wave 4: unlimited quota by unlock, normal price

 

Of course infliction will override that as well.

 

This should hopefully stop these too:

 

Raising prices on all the "gun favorites" will not deter very many people.

 

If you do the math right your situation should have ended with an easy victory:

A nightmare as 2,000 HP. I'm going to assume an average user with an akbar with poor aim and zombie resist will lower the damage.

 

Let's take 1 cader and another person who will help repair. 4 left. Those 4 with akbars will do: ~16 damage/shot. Let's just take 50% hit rate. That means 15 / 30 shots will land. 15 bullets x 16damage/bullet x 4 people = 960 per magazine. You should have easily taken care of the nightmare and the surrounding zombies.

 

Even if the situation was dire (1 door or something I would consider not decent for a cade), you're always going to get the smarter bosses coming after smarter humans, which means sometimes your cade will have most of the bosses or zombie horde while the other cade will survive with 5 zombies. This is not a good excuse to buff everything lol.

 

Most zs servers have some sort of "tier-ing". An example of early modern ZS was the point system. Normally you would need to save points for a decent gun. There was no way to purchase a high tier weapon without acquiring points from kills or assists which meant wave progression. Most of the guns were "unlocked", purchasable, wave 4+. Now many servers are using an actual tier system. Although not perfect, we can modify that existing system to make it fairer for all. Sure isn't fun to have a boomstick party every other map or every specific map. People save up points and spend it when they wish to. Don't trust in basic human goodness for "fairness".

 

As for your quota system, there's no way in hell is that fair for humans. Only those with beefier computers will be able to purchase anything of that sort. This means 1) That 1 bad zs player who thinks he's really good and boomsticks zombies as they come right out of the spawner 2) he gets all the points lmao #joke

 

Maybe we can get certain weapons unlocked earlier. I'm cool with that.

 

And what do you mean too fair is boring lol. Are you those types of want an op weapon and want to see a +500 where really it should be +200? Then afk or poison fagcrab all day long? Like, please. that's not fun at all.

 

We shouldn't at ALL be catering to people who want to use adonis/boomstick/grim immediately and just destroy everything. That's one of the most retarded ideas I have ever heard. System needs to be acceptable for LOW, MEDIUM, and LARGE populations.

[Matt B]

i think buff trait should only be available when there are at least >45 (number can be argued) people on the server. got on earlier when there was about 30 people, and players with buff traits just made massive layers of high hp props that made it impassible for the few zombies to do anything.

 

check out this exciting round of healthcare. multiple 8+ thick door cades, several spots with multiple 1100+hp props blocking entrance. maybe 8 zombies attacking. no way they'd get through any of that.

 

 

however just played a round of insurance that was <30 people and zombines still managed to make it through a thick door cade. not sure about this but just an idea.

[TheAtrocity]

Zombies need a buff of some sort in the beginning rounds (1-possibly 3) and then the humans need a buff from waves 4?/5-6.

 

Really though on most days humans are dunzo on wave 3/4 where basically 50% die off and there's no way 30 v 40z's is gonna work well on the props. Once the inital buffers and outer layers are down or 2 doors are down people start acting like retards and drop everything for a jihad, since they're a measly 100 and so easily profitable, it's a joke. Once wave 5 rolls up and in, zombies are more or less organized from mid-wave 4 and commence with fresh bosses. Props already in a sorry shape are pretty much just stall time at that point.

[Matt B]

balancing and strategy modifications are still pretty fluid right now, so its still a bit difficult to get a handle on things.

 

different maps/population make such a big difference on game play as well. the balancing act is a very difficult one.

 

i'll break it down by low/high population scenarios

 

High Population:

--due to tier system, humans have a difficult time defending during wave 1 and 2 as most don't want to spend 100+ points on low tier weapons.

--if humans do make it to higher rounds, lots of OP weapons are purchased and zombies get slain and many points are made.

 

Low Population:

--due to buff trait, thick barricades with high HP props can be made very quickly, which will take a long time for only a few zombies to break through

--at later rounds, only 1 or 2 people really need to buy high tier weapons. if only a few do, they make mad points and hold off the zombies almost single-handedly

[sharp_shooter]

As for your quota system, there's no way in hell is that fair for humans. Only those with beefier computers will be able to purchase anything of that sort. This means 1) That 1 bad zs player who thinks he's really good and boomsticks zombies as they come right out of the spawner 2) he gets all the points lmao #joke

This person knows what the fuck he's talking about. I'd listen to his entire post.

 

drop everything for a jihad

Plus that shit either needs to be unlocked wave 5 or way more expensive to guarantee a large drop in profit. It's pretty stupid to get kills for doing absolutely nothing.

 

As for actual solutions any of the DA's or staff or whatever the fuck you're called can PM me. I'm not typing all it out and would rather discuss it where it can be easily explained.

[TheAtrocity]

This person knows what the fuck he's talking about. I'd listen to his entire post.

 

 

Plus that shit either needs to be unlocked wave 5 or way more expensive to guarantee a large drop in profit. It's pretty stupid to get kills for doing absolutely nothing.

 

My point exactly. I think it should be raised to 300. Jihads were NEVER supposed to yield you a profit and was intended to poke fun at the rush of zombies. It's a fun weapon, not a profiting weapon where you build your own personal cade using a door or large prop and exclude everyone (in the case of a certain player who loves to get the buff trait, make a personal skycade, and waits for the zombies to pile up). it's not ZS-style nor is it in any way shape or form productive to the team on both sides. I'm tired of seeing that stupid console spam of 30 zombies and everyone asking how much profit that yielded said user.

Edited September 14, 2015 by TheAtrocity

[thebong1]

maybe further improve the game play by creating an agorithum to caluclate how hard the game is curently and unlock weapons earlier if needed. it is not that hard to crunch some numbers like wave, zombie/human ratio, total human firepower, number of cades, map survivablity, etc. all you have to do is have it check at the end of every wave and deide within a certain margin of error what to do.

[Lumpymayo]

maybe further improve the game play by creating an agorithum to caluclate how hard the game is curently and unlock weapons earlier if needed. it is not that hard to crunch some numbers like wave, zombie/human ratio, total human firepower, number of cades, map survivablity, etc. all you have to do is have it check at the end of every wave and deide within a certain margin of error what to do.

 

Asking for rewriting of the coding is a lot of work. I think more realistic balance suggestions should be as simple to code as possible making them more likely to be added. Things that are easy to code would be just changing X value for something. For example Boomsticks now cost X amount of points, Impalers now do X damage, Grims unlocked on X wave. Having to rewrite the code for when the weapons are unlocked could be a very difficult job, especially if there is legacy code that other parts of the game code relies on.

Edited November 3, 2015 by Lumpymayo

[->SK<-]

Any balance that is cheifly down to gameplay (i.e it does x damage) is easy to change around and get into a sweet spot. The biggest problem is the more outside sources you have (more guns for example) you have to balance the other weapons (if needed) around the initial balance you make.

 

Compounding the issue, you also have to look at their worth after balance, what tier they now sit in and other factors after you balance something.

 

It may be easy, but it takes time to get it right. Going too far or not far enough is a fear that I don't want realized.

[thebong1]

Any balance that is cheifly down to gameplay (i.e it does x damage) is easy to change around and get into a sweet spot. The biggest problem is the more outside sources you have (more guns for example) you have to balance the other weapons (if needed) around the initial balance you make.

 

Compounding the issue, you also have to look at their worth after balance, what tier they now sit in and other factors after you balance something.

 

It may be easy, but it takes time to get it right. Going too far or not far enough is a fear that I don't want realized.

 

give it a 10% margin of error. so if it is under 10% it does nothing but if it goes over it changes a few things to balance the game. this can include a point shop sale, increased zombie health, ext. if it is drastic it can redeem players. ZS has no autobalance system so you are not rewriting anything but creating something new.