Change my View: Generation Zero is over

General Discussion
24

That is funny. The June 2020 update is what alienated me with the great softening of the enemy :broken_heart:. I thought April 2020 was fabulous :two_hearts: . I put a good 200+ hours in with April 2020, and I will continue to do so despite the softening of June 2020 once I get through a few other games.

I am going to use No Man’s Sky as a great game to compare to. NMS was a flop when it was introduced. The game was missing a lot of content from the trailers, there were no structures, there was barely any multiplayer interaction, and who knows what else.

Using data from
https://steamcharts.com/app/275850

September 2016 average number of players: 2,982
September 2017 average number of players: 2,146
September 2018 average number of players: 5,911
September 2019 average number of players: 9,019
September 2020 average number of players: 8,526

NMW has released update after update after update giving the player base what was originally promised. Yes, it took a few years, but look at how their average player count has multiplied. Sure, September had a slight dip from 2019, but looking at their overall numbers you can tell they are most certainly on an uptrend.

My point is GZ is still a baby. A toddler now, actually. They still have plenty of opportunities to make the game even better and providing the content that everyone would like. I may not have played GZ in several months because of the other games I have been wanting to play, but I keep coming back to the forums because I know I will eventually play again.

Why do I like the game? The hunt. I pick a Rival :robot:, I prepare a few days with plenty of medkits, adrenaline, and ammo, and I essentially go hunting. If I am lucky, I will find a Rival with plenty of robots around it making it more challenging. Sometimes I even have to face palm myself with the number of robots I have to deal with. The last Tank Rival I went hunting for eventually got noticed by several Harvesters, Tanks, Hunters, etc. Even with the great softening of June 2020, this turned out into a fabulous battle because of the sheer number of bots I had to deal with. The battle occurred in the ruins above Lovnas in the north east corner of the map. I essentially used the ruins as my own mini maze. I couldn’t stop moving in and out of the ruins. This was probably the best moment I’ve had in this game :smiley:. If April 2020 was still in effect, this would have been extremely difficult, but the end result would have been even more satisfying.

But I digress. GZ still has plenty of different land areas to explore should they choose to open them up. The possibilities with new industrial robots is endless. Vehicle usage could still be a thing. They can still add softer difficultly levels and add a harder difficultly level akin to April 2020. And most importantly, there is still the chances of adding a larger 80s soundtrack. :star_struck: There is so much more they can do to build it up.

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@Flybye
That… is so beautiful put…
Now I envy those that had April’s patch even more…
… as I missed this period… cries loudly

I 10’000% agree:the game is extremely too soft.
“Many” asked to tune down the game, saying, it is too hard in skirmish mode.
“Many” others then, and me, let me be honest here, being the loudest and most active on this topic, asked for harder game.

The Devs tried to fix this by slapping on more armour, add more damage, increasing the aggro range, all by itself, not too bad, as it takes longer to kill a machine, indeed, the risk of death increases.

But to me, that felt like a really cheap method to try and fix balance, especially considering that the Machine AI is heavily failing.
Which is what makes it so easy to kill machines off while being “safe”.
Note, “safe” of course is a hyperbole to express a point.
Engaging 13 machines, and making it out alive (heavily wounded, granted, and having lost a ton of HP packs) should absolutely NOT be possible.
Engaging 2 Runners should be darn lethal.
That is how it would be in reality.

Think about it: compare it with a welder robot in a car factory.
These NEVER miss a welding spot, and weld God knows how many welds a minute.
These are dang fast, and beyond accurate.
IF something went wrong, they sense this (through various sensors, like laser lights and whatnot) they act instantaneous.
They don’t take a break, for whatever reason (unless, as per the above line, something is off).

GZ Machines then:
They react very often far too late, sometimes even 10 seconds.
They react not at all, in very few cases.
If they react, then they stand still to shoot, very often resulting in a miss.
Tactics is something that is beyond their interest seems, although EACH one is from military origin.

These things break the game, not just in playability, but in story as well.
How could these bugged microwaves have done what they did?
Impossible.

One explanation we jokingly came up with for the death toll on human side was quite straight forward: The GZ Earths gravity, which seems like 5 times our gravity strength.
Most troops and civilians probably tripped over pebbles and alike, only to drop dead due to impact on the ground.

If the Machine AI gets repaired, and works as it should be working, rest assured, all machines will have their armour and health rating halved.
At the very least halved.

The massive amount of armour and life has been implemented to counter the lack of Machine AI.
Fixing the AI, thus, would result in this amount of armour no longer being needed.

OK, that been said:
In reality, in OUR reality, if those machines from G…
No, wait, let me put this differently:
Imagine GZ took place right here, on Earth.
With OUR people, OUR governments, OUR visions about army and warfare.
A simple Shotgun Runner here, would be so lethal, it would, in comparison to human soldier capability, be a full division by itself, IF it was not hampered by ammo shortage.

If we then consider… 4 of these… and 2 Hunters… and 1 Tank… it (hyperbole) would be enough to take Sweden out.
Note: hyperbole.
I would not know how many it would take, but I assure you… it won’t be many.

And this in GZ?
No.
That would be absolutely no fun.
I mean: it would mean basically death for lifting a foot.
That would be, although realistic, just crazy to play in.

Balance is needed.
It should be survivable, but by very hard work, and luck.
Balance is needed, through fixing the Machine AI.
Not balance by cheap means such as weapon modification, tuned down aim, very high bullet spread, and bullet disintegration (I’ve seen .50 ammo fall apart before impact, making several trails).
Even with Marksman maxed out, the game does weird things with ammo being shot from our side.
That’s not realistic, come on.

Pistols shoot just as far as rifles.
Sure…
Reality in that regard is inexistent.
A .50 sniper rifle, shot at a target 350m away, should hit where aimed (when Marksman is maxed out).
Because that is the simple function of a sniper rifle: to hit targets beyond the range of any other rifle type.
And neutering just that, is turning the weapon into… well… even a Meusser or Stud has higher accuracy, go figure.
This is just wrong.

Some speak of reality, but when you point at reality, suddenly it’s … I’m not even sure what.
Pistols should not be able to be effective beyond maximum 60 meters.
And a Hunting Rifle should NEVER be able to out-perform a sniper rifle in all points but damage.
Since, the sniper rifle was made for extreme long range assault.
And later, to be an Anti-Material rifle, to take out cars, busses, even, with a lucky shot, a tank.
That is the sole purpose of a sniper rifle.

The April’s patch made one big mistake: it was all but optional!
It should have been implemented as a separate game mode, maybe called Guerilla Plus.
It should NEVER have been dropped on everyone like it was dropped on everyone.
Since some people, just are not this hardcore.
If it had been optional, people would not have complained as they did.
And some of the players then, like me, and apparently you, sir @Flybye, as well, having finally some challenge.

Interesting: it has been asked before, as an option… why did they decide to make these changes go mainstream instead?
I fail to get the logic behind it…

Ennywho, that’s how I see it.
Feel free to react, to disagree, but please, if you disagree, motivate why?
Actually, I encourage you all to react. :slight_smile:

Thank you.

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Have you read the Steam comments under the most recent dev letter ?
The antagonism is almost tangible.

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I haven’t, but No Man’s Sky’s first couple of years were pretty brutal. Everyone bashed every single update. There were countless memes of their developer’s director, Sean Murray, and how he lied to the public, etc. It was BAD lol.

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@Fraeddy Latest steam reviews and comments are way too much negative, the negativity on this forum is nothing compared to the Steam reviews ,there is also hate, even against consoles.

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Here’s one interesting thing about GZ; i used the above SteamChart link to look up GZ and surprise-surprise, the peak amount of Steam players, more than 10.000, was in April '20 and in May '20 as well :astonished:,
link: https://steamcharts.com/app/704270#All

Moreover, in May '20, when the brutal AI was in effect due to the April '20 update, the average player amount was well over 1000 players. That’s the 2nd highest average player amount in GZ’s history, topped only by March '19, when GZ was launched.

So, statistics show that at least Steam (PC) players would like to have harder difficulty.

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Also (from Steam):

RECENT REVIEWS:

Very Positive (208)

ALL REVIEWS:

Mixed (8,539)

Does show an upward trend in positive ratings which is a good thing. PS4 is 4/5 stars and

89% liked this video game

Google users

A lot of good coming from their work. Regardless of the push back they get, the trend is in a positive direction and it shows.

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Keep in mind too, a lot of the negativeness stems from an update about the game primarily to consoles and people were like “Why post news about consoles here rofl”

People can be a handful sometimes, but at least they got some form of communication knowing the game is still alive and well. That is how I would look at it,…

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32

Generation Zero is an amazing game, just because AAA games might take the spotlight, there is so much more the dev team can do. The new upcoming game , Second Extinction, -i think that’s the name- is being developed by another team meaning the crew can still work on gz.

The game is almost 2 years old. If u think about when it was released, many believed that the game was no where near release quality. So I’d say that the proper age would be 1yr because of the updates that have been going this year have had a major improvement on the game.

Give this game untill half way through 2021 and I’m sure if we all help put Generation Zero’s name out there, the game will continue and thrive with our small community we have here. (☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞

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33

That statement is a direct contradiction to their own job openings descriptions: “Avalanche Studios, a creative division within Avalanche Studios Group, is a leading developer of AAA open world games and an established partner for tier 1 publishers.”

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Sir, that is obvious advertising.
And not ONE ad is true in nature. :wink:

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@liggisten is not wrong per se. Avalanche Studio’s Group is not an AAA studio. They’ve been hired in the past to work on AAA games, but as far as in-house development is concerned, those teams are quite small in comparison.

Edit: They pride themselves on having been involved in many large projects, which is something that makes sense for them to include in their description for job openings, though.

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36

I’m certain they will figure out how to fix the issues in the end, and when that day comes the fans must be out there again and stand in opposition to what makes this game so extraordinary. The PC rendition is running well overall, on my part in any event, so ideally you comfort folks can anticipate the equivalent.

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I feel like the devs are lazy and don’t listen to people I don’t want to feel this way but that’s the vibe I’m getting and probably other people especially those who quit the game, I mean, I wasn’t even able to write on here for a long time and now I am able to write? Why? The game is very repetitive, every building looks the same, I love the idea of the game but everything just doesn’t work out the way it should. Like the hacking for instance, there are way too many times when it says Remote Hacking 50% and it takes maybe 10 tries or more, this happens way too often, it should be a 1/2 odds but it’s not. There are way too many times when I get stuck in the environment or sometimes the other robots push a giant corpse on me and I can’t move. My friends all quit this game and they said it’s the most garbage game they have played therefore I don’t have any friends to play, and I want to disagree with them. When I first started playing, I loved this game, but in the end, there isn’t much going on. There are copy and paste buildings everywhere, there are the same robots nothing new, I bought some of the dlc and soon realized that it was a terrible mistake, Nothing good, you get the same amount of stuff that would come in a small update, I saw some of this game on YouTube a while back and I thought that it would be awesome to play and I was right, for the first like maybe 5-10 hours it was really fun, but soon it just became frustrating especially after I grind to get the hacker perk. A lot of the materials are ridiculous to obtain and a lot of crafting recipes are just outrageous, like there isn’t a lot of textile but the first aid kits cost way too much for the amount of textiles you obtain. The game is gorgeous though with stunning graphics and wonderful gun sound. I love the aspect of the game, I’d love to see the devs showing more love to its fan base and I’d like to see the game grow in popularity, I’d love to see more robot variety, maybe some bots that can open doors and run into the building you’re hiding in, more bots that have different functionality, I’d love to see a couch play split screen version, I’d love to see a lot of bugs fixed and the hacking aspect fixed, but most importantly, I want to feel like I’m not doing the same stuff again and again, it’s way too repetitive. But that’s my opinion.

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If you finish a story based game and found everything, unlocked everything, finished all challenges and got every trophy … That’s quite a normal feeling.

Gladly the devs still continue working on it. Tomorrow there will come three new procedual missions for example. But besides of that… Give yourself tasks to solve. That’s the only way a once completed game can be kept alive for you.

A chance is still a chance. You have to see it every single time again as a 50% chance, not as a total chance for all tries. And that’s it…then you see, that 50% still is a low chance… And this could even happen with a chance of 90%. Instead of hacking ability you could use hacking darts (2nd tactical equipment DLC).

Btw.

Well, I don’t agree that much. As far as I know that was the case in the beginning, but with all the region revamps it was improved A LOT for more variety.
Regarding the machines, yes, there is still potential for improvements, but we already got swedish apocalypse class machines, the soviet machines and lastly the firebirds.

I can’t tell you what’s been a mistake or not. That’s up to every personality. Finally you don’t need any of the DLC to play the game, but some offer really interesting items to use. I must admit that I also don’t use most of the weapons, but I used the base defense stuff, especially the tactical equipment packs, the resistance flamethrower and the companion and motorbike additions. Nevertheless, what you really should buy for improving the experience, are the two story DLCs, FNIX rising and especially Alpine Unrest. Last one because of the new region, Himfjäl Island, its missions and the challenge over there.

From my point of view it’s at least worth a try to play again with every single new update. And that’s what you should try to communicate to your friends, too. Maybe it helps… And try to make yourself challenges for you and your team.

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necro’d a very old post. but I will take the bait. I won’t go about reading posts from 3 years ago as I have done that before, watched a ton of youtube vids on the game and read up on plenty of reddit posts. So that leads us here to the moment. I got this game in September with the PSN free download. I fell in love with it after the said 10hrs and then bought the DLC’s for the game. sadly I did them out of order, but thats the downfall of being new and an open world setup. as for cut and paste buildings… umm it is set in the 80’s literally half of the US was littered in copy and paste buildings by major building companies. I am sure that can be said of most countries. they still do it today… whole neighborhoods of the same house, just different colors. does the game have bugs, yes and alot of them. but here we are 4 years later and the dev team, probably all 5 of them, are still fixing bugs and making tweaks to the game. is it dead? well the subjective rather than objective. it may be dead to some but for others that are diehards and new additions like myself that recently found the game its still here. and crafting healing kits??? wait, why? the game literally throws stuff at you at every turn. in my first week of playing I figured out how to max out all crafting schematics and find resources that the game wasn’t already shoving down my throat. ya the game can get repetitive in nature with its enemies but name one game that can’t… I’ll wait… one the plus side with missions it isn’t that repetitive. that for sure can’t be said about other games. as for the grinding. that is sorta a love it or leave it thing. I am used to playing RPG style games that are grindy so that part I do find enjoyable. I grind in games that aren’t meant for grinding just to max out gear and resources. that would sorta be the point in a post-apocolyptic world no? thats just my two cents…

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Well, I get it, I’m talking about the house designs, they are pretty much the same interior, I shoulda been more clear but I like the different bunker designs, the old castle ruin places, but I feel like a lot of the barns, houses, and even those big apartment building where you can only explore the basement are a bit repetitive.

One thing I don’t agree with is the hacking chance, I mean I’ve done plenty heads and tails before, best for 1/2 odds. 50% chance for heads, 50% chance for tails. You flip the coin and most times you make the right call even if you’re only picking the same side, sometimes however you do make the wrong call for a number of times, but it’s not as often as the hacking in this game! There was even a few times yesterday, I was playing and the little siren robot thing 90% chance of hack and it took me over 5 times and this happened about 3 times in one day, is my luck with hacking just that bad? This game however, it’s way too often when I sit there trying to hack a 50% chance and not get it until 9+ times, happens very often, too often. Maybe I have a bad luck curse when it comes down to playing this game and hacking, (mostly hacking) I got a large amount of 6 star weapons pretty much one after another (maybe all my luck went to that). Anyways, every time I flipped a coin, not too often I call the wrong side 5+ in a row. That’s just my feel of the hacking mechanics in the game. Plus I don’t like how they automatically know where I am most of the time, when I’m hacking them, I think they fight each other and they just find out where I am? I don’t know.
I don’t know what’s with me, I love watching the robots kill each other for some reason.

The robots
I’d like more of a variety of robots, I get it, they add more slowly. But I’d like more, like some that has insanely smart and scary ai like they could open doors and sneak up on you, even some that are bigger tick like robots (scary and goes up to you just to explode in violent boom), I know about the firebird and the apocalypse class robos. But I want more tactical robots, some that can just ruin you and scare you, like a new robot, doesn’t have to be big, but I’d like it, I mean for future updates. I like scary looking robots. There’s a good book I read, it’s called The Electric State (it’s really cool and I highly recommend) same author made another robot apocalypse book and I want to read it, I forgot what it’s called though…

I’ll probably give this game a break for a matter of years and come back, I know that they add stuff slowly, but it’s mostly the bugs that anger me, also I felt like the hacking issue was a bug.

The dlc, I’m not one for micro dlc’s they’re kind of ehh… I like big dlc’s that add a wide variety, anything that’s micro transaction I don’t like, Thats just how I am.

Also I’d like it if they added a way to pause if you’re playin solo.
And couch play split screen would be awesome.
Also one more thing, I’d love to have more storage space in the container.

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Not long ago I read an article about heads and tails.
The obviously best example for a chance of 50%. One coin, two sides. It has a long history and is still used for making official descitions, like in soccer.
You’re saying that you flip the coin and most times you make the right call. Well, for 50/50 there should be no “most times”, and that’s what has been scientificly proven in the article by making over 250.000 tests. In real the top side of the coin has a higher chance.

And still, a chance is just a chance and no guarantee.

That’s something I’ve had to learn for every game in the past 30 years, too. And, you don’t know what’s in the code behind that.

  • Is there a bad luck protection? (Guaranteed success after a certain number of fails)
  • is it calculated with absolute or rounded values?
  • if second, which rounding rules are used?

I know, the expectation when seeing values of chances may be different, often depend on the context and tend to round up or down for creating something like a guarantee for our mind, because that’s what we humen always want. Therefore we’re easily disappointed if we fail.

I agree. I’ve always been guessing that the programming of the player detection was created in a way that didn’t evolve like the game did… And maybe even doesn’t allow to be changed in a way needed. Or would require great work deep in the basement of the game.

The game started with just us and the swedish machines. The machines have three different states. Idle, searching, in combat.
If they are in combat, they in general immediatly know where you are. Why? Because there is a reason that triggered the status like seeing you, being attacked or being alerted by other machines. That’s simple for just two factions.

But then there came another faction, the soviets. Great, more machines, and everyone fights every different faction… The problem is, that the system of the player detection wasn’t changed, too…

So, for example, if a swedish machine is being shot at, it still just goes in combat and therefore knows where the player is. No matter, who shot at it.

Do you know what I mean?

That’s the problem of this kind of an evolving game. There is no great 5-year-plan for developing the game and its contents for GZ.

There is the basic game they did finish and a backlog of ideas (partially from the devs themselves, partially from the stakeholders/the community) that could be added. They pick some ideas that might fit, check if and how it’s possible to add them, make a roadmap for some sprints, go through each sprint to realize the ideas, evaluate them, and then go into the next sprint.

There is no final goal for the game in total… Just for every single sprint.

At least, that’s how I imagine the development of GZ based on a scrum-system.

But sadly that also means, even if a sprint seems to be succesful for itself, there can be previous code that doesn’t interact with the newly added one perfectly… And that means: bugs, crashes, balancing or performance issues or other issues which require additional sprints to identify and solve them, if even possible.

Well, it’s always a multiplayer game, no matter if you play alone or with others. There are no different modes. And that’s why there is no pause function. It’s like playing Call of Duty or Counterstrike just against bots. I don’t know how to explain it in a better way… For me it’s just logical.

:rofl: that would be great, although we’ll never see that for this GZ. Would be cool for a sequel.
Btw, me and my GZ-mates already did play couch-coop with GZ. 3 PS5 plugged into one Beamer that is able to show up to four inputs.

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This thread is 3 years old. I think time has proven the OP wrong. So time will prove rick wrong too.

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Everyone may have an own opinion.
But finally GZ and its development and evolution just can be understood after following it a few years, not just a few month.