Okay everyone the Dev Team needs your help making Generation Zero harder.
A few months ago Carni had a stream with Zack (Product Director) and Ash (Game Director). They shared a topic on how to improve machine design. They explained that creating new machines was harder and slower to design vs. building upon pre-existing machine behavior and models.
While thinking about building on top of existing machine design I come up with the Black Locust Faction, an AI that has a symbiotic relationship, that is commensalism within the pre-existing machines of Ćstertƶrn.
Unlike the machines of Ćstertƶrn the Black Locust is a passive AI until provoked to become aggressive toward threats to maintain self-preservation.
The idea is to have machines appear to the player as ordinary machines only to discover their target to be stronger and more difficult to defeat.
How do you make Generation Zero Machines Harder?
Making machines harder should be more than just increasing machine health, damage, weapon accuracy, and Player awareness. While improving these attributes does make machines harder, this does not make the game more interesting. We can increase machine difficulty by expanding on machine tactical and strategic behavior as the Player progresses through the game.
I have shared a few ideas below on what can be done to make Generation Zero machines harder, but I wish to extend this challenge to the community.
Some of these ideas are tailored toward how the Black Locust would behave but please donāt restrict your ideas to just Black Locust machines. Feel free to share any ideas you may have. I hope to see some clever ideas below.
Chicken Fever - This behavior is more for agile machines like runners, hunters, and lynx machines. If a machine is low on health, instead of sticking around to fight, the machine would run from the battle in search of more nearby machines (or spawn in) a new wave of machines to the fight.
War Cry - Machines that call in reinforcements (Wolf, Harvester) have a chance to make a final push to turn the tide of battle. By executing a terrifying alarm or call to battle, they will enrage their reinforcements, causing the machines to have increased speed, firepower, and aggression for a short time. This would most commonly occur when the Wolf or Harvester has low health.
Tactical Retreat - This is mostly for Tanks that like to sit in one place for the entire fight and get their health widdled down to zero. If the Tank is unable to perform damage to the Player but is consistently receiving damage from the Player, have the Tank retreat a far distance and find cover. The Tank can recover a portion of its health after waiting a short time. Then the Tank can approach the player from a different direction. Or wait for the Player to come out of hiding and bombard them if they come in range.
Clock - This ability is mainly for the Broodmother and Locust machines. The Broodmother is elusive and prefers to stay out of site. The Broodmother can become clocked for a short time to avoid detection. The Locust are elite hunters that can attack from the shadows, or while clocked.
Cornered Prey - The Broodmother will always prefer to run than to fight yet if cornered, the Broodmother will prove to be formidable prey and call in enrage machines from nearby followed by performing powerful strikes at the Player before making a last attempt to escape.
One way to make the machines harder in general is to make their behavior smarter and less predictable. Like their human adversaries they should not just stand there, but be moving from cover to cover. And work together, for instance by flanking or providing cover fire for the other machines to move in closer.
One thing about the Lynxā I really liked was that they were constantly moving, attacking from the cover of the tall grass.
Tanks should not only do stomping attacks when they have lost their weaponry. But randomly run towards the player, stoping or gassing them.
Personally I do not get a trill from only combat, but more from exploring and story progression. I like to see more lore. And I would like to see more Parkour type challenges to find lore and new locations. A combination of more exploration finding new locations, scenes, items and smarter machines would make it perfect.
Remember your first Hunter encounters in pitch dark Forest regions.
There were 3 of us at the time and unknowingly we ran chased out into unexplored terrain, to finally drown ourselves among the reeds and shallows along the west coast.
Fisherman- a machine would fool a human thinking he was running away or in āCalmā mode, only to be attacked by it or for new machines to appear after the machine runs for 50 meters or something
I love those ideas! What if there was a mode either in certain situations or certain places on the map, that there was something like - Queen Bee mode? Where a tank (or something equivalent) is already or becomes invulnerable until all other nearby units are destroyed - yet they can still shoot at and damage the player while invulnerable. Itās basically a variation of Clock. I would think that maybe a counter is triggered that keeps up so many machines in an area and when that reaches 0 (not counting itself) Itās then vulnerable to attacks again.
Situations has to be discussed and decided, but placesā¦ Hell yeah!
Remember the feeling you got first time you put your foot in the door, underground somewhere at the machine factories?
The FOA Facility or RĆ Factory. Not to forgett, FOA 4 on HimfjƤll. I expected all of us to be dead in there and someone in team grunted anxiously āWe gona die, we gonna dieā. No names mentioned but you know who you are if you read this.
Those places just waiting for something to lurk in the shadows until the light goes out.
And then there is all the ānewā and not yet revealed locations behind the yet blocked armored doors that can take us into unexplored military and research facilities. devs
We could use some weekly missions to go back to these huge setpieces they spent a ton of budget on. Maybe thwarting FNIX from starting up production full time, or blowing up the current production run.
And we need to find where the Soviet machines are coming from. That could be another nice setpiece. Maybe someplace buried in the Marshlands, or off the North Coast.
For starters, it would be nice to see a hardcore mode for dedicated players eliminating fast travel- to force them to either hoof it or actually use the vehicles in the game (in my experience, most ignore them). Additionally- as the N144 chain gun was originally mounted on a vehicle, perhaps one could be made. Four players could have a motorcycle on point, a repair vehicle, and a vehicle mounting an N144 on a mount as defense. Just a thought. Maybe bridges linking all of the playable islands- and three or four- person missions made (some time sensitive, like rescue a survivor) to encourage the use of vehicles.
Some love it. Iāve used it repeatedly. In my experience though, its existence eliminates the need for the vehicles in the game. Most of those that Iāve run into never use vehicles at all. Those who do use them do so very sparingly- almost as a kind of āthing to doā for the moment. I know of no players who have self- nerfed by using vehicles or walking only. My suggestion is that if a hardcore mode included elimination of fast travel (or an option to turn it off), some enterprising players might just actually take to using vehicles. They do, after, all, add another element to the game. Not that I expect this to become a reality, mind you.
I just think of my first - letās say 50 - hours in GZ.
I just took the map, watched for interesting spots (i.e. structures and interesting streets/roads, dead ends) and walked thereā¦ Or used the bike, if possible.
By that I learned so much about the map and found many secrets.
I hardly used fast travel.
After I finished the main and side missions and began just to hunt for loot, challenges and so on, I used fast travel very much.
When I lost all my safehouses, I just used my bases for fast travel, but most of the time I walked or drived.
Finally, they can save time if you already know everything, but until then I would totally agree that less is more.
I agree with much of what you said. I love walking the map and have done so repeatedly. That said, Iād choose vehicles over fast travel any day- and as long as fast travel exists, vehicles will be rarely seen. That can only negatively impact sales of the vehicle DLCs. Buy hey- I only play the game.
I think the machines should work more tactical.
They have different weapons and purposes.
Snipers and those which use their gas grenades often initially attack from far away. Thatās good. They come to closer ranges if their shoulder cannons are shot off.
But everything in mid to close range just is chaos.
Especially the idle time between shots should be used better. Retreat, take cover or go into melee. Thatās too rare in most cases.
Iām all for making the machines more challenging with tweaks to their reaction time or āsmallā programming which might make them unpredictable. Iād like to see that however, as part of either a hardcore mode which players could ignore if they didnāt want that challenge, or as toggles which a player could turn on or off- so that those who join that player are now playing with those toggles activated (or not). I donāt know if either is possible, given the method of players connecting to one another. No fast travel might just bring more dedicated players together, and bridges linking the playable islands (not a difficult addition, I believe) would add new elements to the game. Just traveling would be more challenging instead of just clicking a button. Lastly, such a mode might just spur some who have not yet done so to purchase the vehicle DLCs. I frankly donāt expect to see any of this, but itās nice to talk about.
