Generation Zero

[Dweller_Benthos]

The reddit is firmly divided between the two groups, the "it's too hard to be fun anymore" group and the usual "you just need to get better weapons/tactics/reflexes, ya whiny baby" group.

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

How do you fare as a single player? Or is it an online-only game?

[Art Blade]

"of course" it's online only. I reckon anything "survival" requires online only these days.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I mean you can do single player, but expect a harder time of it, just because there are so many enemies at once now. Binn is playing it pretty much alone, but he has a ton of high powered weapons. I really think a player starting out alone would have a really hard time of it.

[BinnZ]

You are totally right D_B. I gave the game to a friend, hoping we would be able to team up together and I would sort of replay the game from the start with moderate hunting rifles etc. But no. That was a complete disaster. For new players, it's unbarable. The first few little islands are still doable, but as soon as you reach the big island, it's madness. A new player cannot survive that. Even with the best weapons I gave him, it was still a struggle. And the experimental AG4 I gave him, disappeared during a disconnection. So he was left with only 'normal' gold weapons.
The thing is; without an experimental .50 the game is impossibly hard. And best to have a descent experimental assault rifle or SMG with it, or you be toast anyway. And you need tons of the right ammo of course, that a new player can NEVER find in the first areas.
They did such a bad move doing what the *bleep* community is saying all the time... seriously I have never seen a group of devs who lets themselves manipulate by some community bullshiters as Avalanche. It's ridiculous. The game was perfectly balanced when it came out, despite some minor flaws. They only fucked things up, and rolled back, and fucked up again, just by doing what the community is crying for.
It's a shame, really. Another good game goes to waste

[fragger]

That sounds pretty short-sighted. You can't just cater to the hard-core fans who have already had tons of experience and collected the best gear, not if you want to attract new players. That's clique mentality and it'll likely harm their reputation, if it hasn't already.

That "get good or get lost" mindset is off-putting to newbies, and it's self-defeating.

[LowPolyOWG]

It's a problem in a lot of communities. One thing is over-powered according to select few, everybody calls for a NERF. Sometimes, it's justified. Destiny 2's 2.8.0 update added higher damage for auto rifles. One of the exotics became very popular to use as it had no damage fall-off range and it's ricochet projectiles did 2x body shot damage. A lot of people complained, as it made all other auto rifles useless at longer distances. Bungie reduced the effective range and ricochet damage as a result.

Or, developers do poor desicions while making a game. Examples:

Modern Warfare 2019 had a problem with the M4A1 and 725 shotgun being superior to everything else in the game. Clearly, the designers took lessons from Apex Legends (Titanfall's battle royale mode), where they said buffing weapons was not necessary. Some of the developers said balance isn't fun, before Modern Warfare launched.

Ironically, people look back to MW2's multiplayer and said it was "the best", despite obvious flaws that never went adressed (scavenger, one man army grenade spamming etc).

Ubisoft Massive messed up with NPCs. They made them one-shot players behind cover (most likely a bug) and eat bullets. This was at highest difficulty, and people with their optimized gear builds for that difficulty was pissed. Players decided to exploit glitches to outdamage them, leading to a massive banwave. Sure, they adressed it saying "we'll look into NPC tuning, we messed up".

Bungie released Destiny 2 on Steam, without making the game beginner friendly. There were hardly any guide for beginners where to start the year 1 campaigns. You are told to speak with the vendors at the different planets/moons, then you're handed a lot of quests associated with them. It left a lot of players overloaded/confused. A new player on reddit said they went to the 1st raid as that was the only thing they could do with their group of 4 people. None of them had a clue what they were doing and they quit the game, after several hours of failed encounters. It's poor game design if your audience need to look up internet articles to figure out what to do. Bungie's thoughts: "Veterans could help our new players, nothing wrong with this idea?".

Veteran players started Shadowkeep and played through the new activities/raid, while new players had no idea what to do, other than patrolling/random events/side quests etc. Bungie said they will update the experience to be more beginner friendly this fall.


I guess the Generation Zero devs thought that new players would play with the high levels to "help" them, going by the co-op and gear sharing. Probably why they made that decision in the first place, but didn't thought about potential problems that could arise. Most likely, they will either fix it this month or talk about it in a development letter.

[Dweller_Benthos]

There was a twitter post about the devs looking into fixing this sort of thing, but since this is the second or third time they've had to do it, you'd think they'd have learned by now. I went looking for one of the new things in the game that's supposed to be filled out more in a future update, and it's fairly close to the starter area, south coast region. This is the first region after leaving the initial area, so it's the first thing new players will encounter. Granted, it's near a fairly heavily guarded military base that is part of the main quest, that really for a new player I think would be pretty hard to do the way it is now, but that's another discussion. Anyway, this new item is supposed to be a power generator or something, and is the thing causing all the fog in the area, which also causes graphical glitches for some people because they messed up the fog settings when they added it in, but that's even another discussion. So it's fairly easy to find and destroy, though I had to fight through a couple bunches of hunters to get there. Oh yeah, hunters don't show up in groups of two or three anymore, it's groups of four or five and usually a couple groups so you get eight or ten of them, all shooting those flechette shotguns at you. Better have a couple dozen health packs on you. Anyway, after destroying the generator, a harvester shows up and starts spawning hunters. If I was a new player, with level two or three gear, I would not have been able to finish either of those battles. As it was with experimental weapons and like I said, several dozen health packs, I wouldn't say it was especially difficult, just it becomes tiresome, run away, spam health, run back up, empty clip into nearest hunter, get shot with flechettes several times, run away, spam health pack, etc.

I recorded video, I might upload it just to show what it's like.

[Art Blade]

do people actually pay for that sort of game? I'd not even touch it if it was free.

[BinnZ]

Yes Art, and that's the irony of it all; the game was "free to play for a WEEK" on steam, and you could buy it for only 10€. The hundreds, probably thousands of players who tried, must have definitely gotten scared away by the horrible damage values of today. It is a sad story. I started a topic about it in the feedback section of their forum. Hope it helps a bit. I think I took a fair bit of time to explain to them how I feel, and I would take account for it if I were them. Well, let's hope:

said topic on generation zero forum

[Art Blade]

very good post that you wrote there. I hope they take notice and perhaps rethink their concepts.

You reminded me of myself right now. I'm currently playing a brand new game XCOM: Chimera Squad (not posting about it here because nobody cares about turn-based strategy games here) and I just changed my steam "recommendation" to "NOT recommended."

Here it is if you're interested.

Spoiler

I played and liked XCOM, then "XCOM: Enemy Within" but a little less, and what followed I didn't play nor like. Then SUDDENLY this game pops up and I'm once again having proper fun Fresh, different, but still the old XCOM-feeling to it. Without those RNG-heavy things like base-building and recruits but straight into the action, LOADS of new stuff, the best is probably the turncoat grenade that you toss at your enemies and lean back grinning while they start to tear themselves apart. LOL, great fun so far. Played 9 and 8 hours straight, not even noticing that. I know I'm a bit early to recommend it after 17 hours but damn, the price is really good and for that money I had tons of fun already.

1st edit: "17" and allowed comments.

2nd edit: Now that I have progressed a lot, tested, fought with bugs of various kinds, especially losing items including epic weapons and losing abilities.. I still like this game but I'm wary now because of the *bleep* happening. As of now, like about 80 hours experience, 12th of May 2020, I'd say WAIT until it's patched. Forums are full with bug reports right now so let's hope they actually fix some of the weirdest bugs quickly.

Because of the trouble I had and kind of losing my whole career and using mods to fix bugs that may be game-breaking (I watched a vid showing someone losing his weapons WHILE ON A MISSION rendering that character useless, and it was on ironman difficulty...) and using the console to get lost items back...

right now I cannot recommend it any more. Until they fixed those bugs.

[Dweller_Benthos]

A friend of mine is a fan of the XCOM games, and just played Chimera Squad and said it was decent but short. He didn't mention much about bugs, but then he was also just playing Phoenix Point so maybe he's gotten used to bugs, I dunno lol. I guess Phoenix Point is really bad.

But anyway, I made the video if anyone wants to take a gander at what it's like now. the first bit is a secret Easter egg type thing in a spooky cave. A bit of fun there and a loud surprise, don't turn the volume up too far lol. Then I show the new power station thing that's causing all the fog in the area, at least that's the general idea, the story behind it isn't in place yet, it's supposed to be out the next couple months I guess. But anyway, it's pretty easy to take out once you get to it (I already shot it a few times before thinking of taking a video, so it's already on fire) but then I can't leave well enough alone and attack a bunch of hunters which makes me run away far enough for a harvester to spawn and bring along a bunch of his hunter friends. The battle was actually a bit fun, though tedious at times, like I said, shoot, get shot, spam health packs. For a single high level character like mine, not too much of a difficulty, it was just a bit of a slog. But a lower level character would have a tough time of it.

[Art Blade]

nice vid, horror game.

[Dweller_Benthos]

With experimental weapons, it takes a clip of AP ammo to take out a hunter, the next level down same weapon would probably take at least two clips. The game really can't be played right now by a low level character with low level weapons.