@pegnose
I do not mind directions, sir.
Trees have branches, some nice, some a bit less nice, but it’s still a tree. 
I really thought i had posted this in discussion… hmmm…
So, it’s my fault.
This is not about fault. And of course, I view this through my very personal perspective.
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I`m sorry @Xogroroth but you keep writing this longs texts, and its really hard to have the patience and to get to the point of the “post”, it´s a mess, and i doubt any dev would have the patience to read all of this, it´s not objective and direct, it does not help to improve the game and any new participant will be really confused (i actually am not confused and i replied in the beginning).
Please try to make your discussions less “messy” and more focused and do not quote everyone and everything.
I am writing this as a friendly critique because almost every discussion you start or participate you keep using long texts.
By pointing you to this fact i hope the devotion and love you have for the game can be used in a more efficient way.
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Re scaling versus region locked robots, and I definitely prefer the latter. I’ve tried things like Oblivion, and as I leveled up or improved, the monsters leveled with me. I never really got “better” because the challenge always matched my ability, in terms of direct danger / damage / hp etc. I’m struggling to recall an open world example for this, but I’ve met one where some areas were just hard for lower level or inexperienced people, without scaling. Those were lands of mystery, and there was a sense of accomplishment in finally working one’s way in. In mastering the game, even though some of that mastery is illusionary - levelling happens by playing, XP keeps arriving, and casual or not you’ll probably end up able to deal with the challenge. In a way, it’s an elegant “choose your own difficulty.”
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Fallout 4 was such a game where it got harder the further south you went. I like this approach. It also makes it harder to get the better weapons that are “hidden” in those regions.
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Funny enough, ESO switched from one to the other mid-flight. (Which was one of the factors that soured the experienced for me at the time.) I just googled for an article that would describe the details on the off chance that anyone cares, and while most of the top matches seemed to hate the change, I found one in favor that actually makes a coherent case. I found it interesting reading (though they offer no solution for the problem you pointed out, which I agree is a fairly big one – that said, their level scaling is hard to fully explain in a single, comprehensible sentence).
tl;dr Their main points are, you can start DLC right away if you want (without leveling up first), and in fact take zones in any order you like; you can join any fight and be useful (if not as efficient as someone who was many more skills).
Thinking about it, GZ is an interesting case, as level/skills aren’t terribly important; knowing the strategies and having good gear seems to go much further. I took a level 3 or so character and shot up FNIX bots at the airport the other day. It wasn’t really that much harder, it just cost more ammo as fewer shots are on target due to the lack of accuracy skills.
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@Ennui I’ll certainly read that. Elder Scrolls was on my mind, since I’m a Daggerfall grad, and I found the changes post-Morrowind to be disappointing (mostly because Bethesda proper were bought, and the original team left after the Zenimax aqcuisition). Mmoprgs work differently by design than not-mmoprgs though, and yet I feel elements of their design run through Generation Zero. It’s one reason I question what it wants to be. Thanks for the link!
Edit: I’m amused that the link in story linked is screwed up and points to “somewhere.com”
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Some games seem to have this weird identity crisis.
Shadowrun Chronicles had all saves on the company-run server, global text chat in the hub, frequent skill changes / respecs, and so on, but at the same time, no open world.
And of course when they lost the license, that was it, since you had no way of privately hosting a session.
As for GZ, the feature that seems most out of place to me is that it’s an evolving world, which as I’ve mentioned before I’m not a fan of. I wish changes were compartmentalized into DLC so you could opt in or out.
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One more thing.
Heh, I was going to link the original article, but apparently, there’s a neat summary on wikipedia now:
The tl;dr is that with strictly skill-based games, even with practice, your talent/reflexes/… gate whether you’ll be in the top 20 %, whereas with grinding-based games, anyone can be in the top 20 % (of certain rankings, gear, etc.) eventually.
This is interesting to me in that we have a number of players here who pride themselves of their skill/strategy and embrace the initial harshness of the game, and then in seeming contraction to that, the pink weapon grind of the rivals, which is mostly an exercise in patience (rather than skill) that then levels the playing in terms of gear.
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The percentage scaling based on highest char level or all players char levels doesn’t work, as seen from the example i gave. So, another, new scaling criteria is needed.
As far as technical goes, that’s how idea development goes. Once you have an idea, you need to put it into the context of the game and look if it actually works, without being unfair to some of the people. That’s why i presented my example as well to see if there are any flaws in the idea.
Coding as such, isn’t the one that we need to discuss at all. That’s the devs ballpark. Devs know what the Apex engine is capable of and how to code features.
Optional gameplay for MP works well if there are dedicated gaming servers, where the host (server admin) sets the game rules for all who participate. Some of the games that work like so are: Rust, Minecraft, ARK: Survival Evolved.
Even in those games, there are set rules beforehand and it’s not like where anyone who joins brings their own set of rules. It just doesn’t work that way in MP concept. Either you accept the rules of the host or go somewhere else. Your own, individual rules work well in SP concept though.
Though, GZ MP would need a lot of rework to make the dedicated gaming servers to happen and question is: is it even worthwhile?
Current MP sessions are tied to the host. If host quits (or game crashes), everybody in the MP session are booted from the game. Also, what about missions? With dedicated gaming server (running 24/7), who’s missions server follows? Or is there any point to have missions in dedicated gaming server at all?
At current state of GZ, dedicated gaming server would be a sandbox with little in it: exploration/looting and combat.
If enemies spot you at the same range they spawn into your visual range then this would make the game exceptionally hard for everyone. Also, throwing any kind of sneak gameplay out of the window.
What i’ve seen from the game is that enemies have far poorer eyesight than hearing. It’s like machines are half-blind but their hearing is exceptionally great.
I’m not a programmer for consoles or PCs, so i don’t know what the Xbox One/PS4 hardware limitations are. My expertise lies within different aspect of the PCs. Also, i don’t own any of the consoles (long time ago i had NES). Now, i only have PCs.
Again with the “Sir”. (-_-) Did you not read what i said to you about the proper usage of “Sir”? Or you did read it but decided to completely ignore and disregard it?
Offtopic reply to you (click here to read it)
“Marmara fasciella”, known as “Aesyle fasciella” in 1875, “Gracilaria quinquenotella” in 1877 and also known as “Marmara quinquenotella” isn’t the source or meaning of my name. For the true source and meaning of my name, HERE is further reading.
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I know. My point was that if you go to Wikipedia (and if someone bothers to look it up at all, that’s a likely first port of call), that’s not what you’ll get. You’ll get the moth.
And even if you’re aware of more obscure parts of Greek mythology, it could be either. (Just like if you called yourself, say, Juno, it wouldn’t be clear whether you were into Romans or old synthesizers.) It was clear to me which one you probably meant after you implied that it implied gender, but before that, it really could have gone either way.
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I think their level scaling is neatly summed up by the line “You go where you want, when you want. And you’re always important.” That strikes me personally as hollow entertainment, but I’m not someone who likes a trophy for turning up.
I’m not sure the wiki article uses the Pareto principle right. In any case, being in “the top 20%” doesn’t mean very much in Generation Zero because it’s not competitive. The “See Also: Skinner Box” gave me a laugh.
The difference that gear makes is interesting though. Like I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve tried a restart on permadeath, and now I miss my old rifle and shotty. Gaining gear happened at the same time as I learned how to play the game, and it’s only now I’m discovering what kind of difference it makes to have anything better than grey guns.
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That’s the usual promise though, isn’t it. “Here’s a fun narrative, and it’s about you!”
It’s not the only possible promise, of course. There are MMOs that do the opposite (“Notice all those other people around while you’re on a mission? Yeah, we’re basically just throwing human resources at the problem until one of you fools succeeds. Hope you didn’t think you were special …”). I always thought that was better for immersion than having to ignore the other hundred “chosen ones” running about, but it does seem more rare. Perhaps not what most players like to hear. 
But all that is perhaps beside the point:
I’m not convinced people necessarily want a trophy for turning up.
I think they may want a narrative for turning up.
They bought a game, and expect entertainment from it, not achievement.
Yes and no. There is no PvP, certainly. There are no explicit leaderboards either, of course. (There’s a lot of “bragging rights” stuff though, Steam achievements that tell you how many % of the playerbase have the same achievement; titles and cosmetics from GZ challenges, etc.)
Most of all though I would expect that most people who play co-op want to be useful to their team. (We could also try to phrase this in terms of appreciation or respect.) Having a near full complement of high quality weapons to choose from makes this easier. As this is attainable through grind (i.e. not solely predicated on skill), most anyone who cares to can get there eventually, and be in the top 20 % best geared. (To then leave when all missions are run and all gear is ground. If people didn’t leave, obviously near 100 % of the active playerbase would eventually be “perfectly” geared.)
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I’m definitely not a modern gamer.
I think you’re right, I’ve just missed that somehow. Most games I’ve played have been about me either taking part in a larger events, or getting swept up in them. Morrowind was fairly unusual in that regard, becoming the divine magical hero. Perhaps I don’t need a lot of external validation. I don’t see Generation Zero as making us the chosen one either. From my perspective, we’re late and we’re choosing to ‘solve the mystery’. We’re not particularly special.
That’s a good point. Part of my entertainment is the achievement, but I guess that’s not as common as I thought. I chose a poor phrase before - by trophies for turning up, I meant I expect to have to work for a reward, not have the challenge lowered enough I can trip over it by accident and still get the ‘well done!’ fanfare. It feels like a bad film, when the villain catches the hero and decides “it’s not fair for them! I’ll throw down my weapon and make myself vulnerable. That makes sense!” Having challenges lowered to meet me, and then patting me on the head afterwards for a great piece of work feels a little patronising to me.
I see it similarly. There is basically nothing hard about GZ. After a while you know which strategy works for you in taking out the biggest, baddest robots the game comes up with. And that is the only ‘hard’ thing it offers in the first place. Of course, equipment and skills help. But those come naturally through the progress of the game.
Then there are gold/experimental weapons, and in-game as well as steam achievements. But they either come naturally with the game progress or it is a simple grind. The experimental weapons are a bit more of a challenge in the beginning as you need to kill slightly tougher enemies for them. But as soon as you start having your first Exp, it gets increasingly easier. And given the fact that not only tanks drop Exp weapons, it is not even that hard in the first place.
Other games are different. Some offer some actually hard achievements that some players are just not able to get - for skill based reasons. Not sure GZ should be like that, though. I like that it is one of those games that you finish and then you have done it all. I am old and have accepted that I am not fast enough anymore to ever be a good pubg player. It is good that there are some games out there which have a high accessibility for everyone and serve you immersion instead of a competitive challenge.
Aye, that’s the only “achievement” I’m interested in here, having seen it all. Or as I phrased it earlier, closure.
Heh, fast enough to beat me to that one.
I was going to say that if I were to seek out challenges, it’d likely be more of the puzzle variety (e.g. Portal). That’s something us old farts can still excel at, plus it’s training that arguably has benefits beyond the game (“time well spent”).
I don’t know how universal this is, but speaking for myself, it’s different for different games.
Any challenge that deserves the name must by its nature be non-trivial. This probably implies investment (practice, analyzing mechanics, fiddling with builds, etc.).
Having had my investment devalued in games that changed (so much that what I knew was no longer applicable, or in a direction that made the game uninteresting for me), I’m now much more reluctant to try to master e.g. Elite Dangerous (where all my effort will be as nothing if I get bored with it or they switch off the servers) compared to “proper” flight simulator (if the product disappears, I can to a degree move on to a similar one. While the flight model will differ, the generally ideas and physics, knowledge about specific aircraft, airports, and aviation in general, flying with VATSIM etc. will all be transferable to varying degrees, and some of it has real world relevance to boot). Much easier to get invested when you know your investment is safe.
Perhaps, but I suppose internal validation is still validation? Just from people whose opinion matters more? 
Skyrim of course made you the chosen one. The dragonborn, specifically. And, if you hung around long enough, the head wizard of the academy, chief assassin, master thief, and likely a dozen other things that don’t immediately spring to (my) mind.
Might be the correct thing to happen, depending on genre.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I think I’m relatively robust when it comes to those things, but I hated going to my faction’s starter town in ESO because NPCs would keep congratulating me on one of the very first quests where I saved the king or something. Total noob character, no skills, dressed little better than a beggar, wanders into the palace and does something any guard in the palace could and should have done. Bit grating. Or that’s how I remember it anyway, it’s been a while.
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Interestingly, exactly this has drawn me more and more into competitive (online) first person shooters for a while as the skills you acquire there transfer between one and another to a certain extent. Learning how to defeat a specific boss in Doom felt increasingly hollow to me. Having accepted that I suck in terms of response time and enemy spotting under pressure, I regained the enjoyment of more arbitrary (artificial?) challenges that single player games pose. It can be fun to beat a game even if it does not get you anywhere else. But of course I understand the part with the safe investment in terms of games getting shut down (applying more to games which don’t have a definitive ending).
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My apologies, miss…
I did miss that part.
Now, sir is in the military used for both genders, in most countries, I was not aware you were a woman…
In military service, when addressing superior officer, it is also distinguished if the officer is either male (called: “Sir”), or female (called:“Ma’am”). E.g: “Yes, Sir!” or “Yes, Ma’am!”.
For the puzzle type of games (like the Portal you brought out), you might want to look at The Talos Principle. Portal and Portal 2 are child’s play compared to The Talos Principle. I had some really tough times completing The Talos Principle and it’s expansion DLC: Road To Gehenna and i loved it. 
The philosophical story (journey) in there is also a great but it was a bit too complex for my brain (i’m not that type of person).
Back to the original topic;
At current state, GZ can be tough for solo players since it’s intended for co-op play. If the game is too hard for solo player, the game’s difficulty is lowered by inviting a buddy to your game, making the game easier. The more people you invite - the easier it gets.
There is another game where you can either play solo or up to 4x players in crew: Sea of Thieves.
I haven’t played that game myself and don’t know how difficulty scales in there compared if you play solo, 2, 3 or with 4 players. Perhaps someone who has played it can shed some light on the difficulty scaling in Sea of Thieves? So, we’d have some basis on how it’s done in other games with similar concept.
Without that, i don’t know what should be done to equalize difficulty regardless the amount of players in-game or if there is even a need to do that.
/Post edited to remove ad. Advertising on the forum is not allowed - Mod
Well i have a very crazy suggestion…
In the game Metal Gear Solid 5, if you die too much an option will be given to you, a chick hat, basically enemies will not see you the first time you get discovered and the game is much more easy.
Something similar could be done in the Following way:
Single Player only
No Loot from destroyed enemies
Enemies would not see you
Timer to use the Hat
Only available to use until level 15
With this mechanic only new players playing alone struggling with the game would use them?
Any thoughts?