Make the easier level of difficulty EASIER

Feedback/Feature Requests
22

It is a bug.

While latest update did tweaked the machines a bit, it mainly touched harvesters:

In this update we’ve also taken our first steps to updating the machine behavior, primarily in combat. Much of this is beneath the surface and won’t be immediately noticeable, but as you go up against the machines more you may notice a few changes to how they approach combat - specifically a new behavior for the Harvester that may surprise you!

Source: https://generationzero.com/en/blog/april-update-patch-notes

And now we know that the new behavior of the harvester is their ability to call in hunter pod airdrops.

Military hunter’s gas mortar and resulting damage from it’s gas got also increased and here i don’t know if it was intentional or part of the bug as well.

However, the pinpoint accuracy of rocket pods on harvs and tanks + their non-stop fire rate, are bugs, since from the launch of GZ, no machine has ever had that kind of god level accuracy and fire rate.

Machine aggro range seems to be bug as well since before, you had some time to evade (proximity arrow turned white if machine was close; turned yellow when machine heard you; and turned red when machine locked on you). But now, there is no gradual warning, instead machine locks on you at the instant you get into it’s hearing range.

If you’re host, then from game settings, turn auto-scaling OFF. This reduces the machine amount down to 1 player game, even when you have 4 players in your game.

And the best pro tip (it’s actually a secret): harvs and tanks have limited weapon range of 200m.
Meaning that if you are more than 200m away from them, they may try to shoot at you but none of their bullets/rockets are spawned, making you completely safe from them. Then it’s just matter of sniping them for afar.
Though, not all machines have their weapon range limited to 200m. Concussion Rifle (military and FNIX hunters) has a range of at least 300m, if not more (haven’t tested the exact range yet).

2 Likes
23

As far as I could tell from trying to fix something myself with the deca tool, the auto-scaling affects damage multipliers only, but not the number of opponents.

Regardless, I was having way too many hunters even in my SP game at the current time, for my own personal taste. They would frequently come in packs greater than half a dozen (to the point where it got hard to count), whereas I personally would like to have no more than just a single hunter in SP right now - that is unless I failed to take out the flyers, which could alarm further hunters from farther away.

Btw, I do appreciate the tips you are giving me; but we’re waiting for a patch that would allow us to have a gameplay more to our liking, before we pick up the game again. We’re really hoping this is something that is going to happen; which is why I am here.

We’d like to be able to get closer than hundrets of meters: Hide behind trees and barns nearby, flank, place traps and lures, run out and attack, run back to cover, … those sorts of things. That was really the fun part to us within the first 30 hours, and it wouldn’t work like that with too many enemies, or the homing missiles.

24

Hi,

I’d like to add my encouragement for an easier “Adventure mode”. I really like the game, after getting it about 6 months ago (for the xbonex). I found progress very difficult, but was able to slowly make my way around the story (still unfinished), since the difficulty was cruel, I’m not great at these sort of things and I’m using a controller. I got the dlc, but have not tried it yet, since it seemed to me like post-game content.

The update happened and the game became much harder for me. I immediately switched the difficulty down, and fiddled with the scaling option. I like the changes to the interface menus and encumbrance, but the difficulty seems to have become impossible for me now. It’s hard to even search for ammo and health-packs (an essential consumable), but they don’t seem to be about and I end up using anything I do find in trying to fend stuff off (even while repeatedly dying), rather than being able to save it up for an offensive against a story objective.

A friend bought the game (on my request) after the update and wasn’t interested, after not being able to move off the starting peninsula because of difficulty. I don’t feel able to ask them for a co-op session with the game how it is, since I know it’ll just end up in frustration.

I think it is worth asking if the adventure mode couldn’t be as it’s described in-game, because I don’t think I can play it without making progress, finding items, rewards and having in-game some down-time The down-time really did used to build tension. It would have been nice to have found more upgraded weapons, considering the amount of time I’ve spent searching the game for them, for instance.

Please don’t take this as an offence, since I assure you I’d not have created an account here unless I thought very highly of the game.

P.S. Some weird xbox bug for me is that the trigger doesn’t always work - sometimes I press it but nothing comes out!

All the best,
UsernamePending (on xbl)

3 Likes
25

I thought that was an issue with my PC mouse…I’m glad I’m not the only one

1 Like
26

Yes I think all of the points are great specially the first one-

Stealth depends on hiding and sneaking and taking out enemies “silently”. However, correct if I’m wrong, but it’s impossible to take out an enemy without alerting every machine in the vicinity to your position. Heck, I’ve even taken out drones from like a mile away with a sniper rifle, only to have runners from that position noticing me and running towards me, forcing me to engage in close combat. Shouldn’t a game where silencers and stealth exist, cater to the “secret assassin” play style?

I have one shot killed robots in a group from far away with sniper rifle and a really good silencer, and it will still alert at least 7 other machines, often fnix hunters. The secret assassin playstyle was something that made me buy GZ, but unfortunately it’s not really possible to do it.
Thanks for reading and I hope the devs make split screen :smile:

27

Now I will be honest right from the beginning…I did NOT read every single reply…because if you do this you’d have to make EVERY level easier & you cannot do that.

Add one more level…keep the Adventurer as is…and simply add an Explorer level, something of that nature as I have seen in some other the other open world games where the level of combat is about the same but less often. So instead of facing 3 runners you face 1. The Hunter’s level is a 1/4 to 1/3 less than the Adventurer level…so basically you are more playing to do the story. Now certain areas where there is an overwhelming number of machines…well maybe drop that down 1 or 2 of each kind but don’t change the present levels…I play completely solo on the Middle Level and there are times I will probably scream loud enough that my neighbors think I am dying or something…which I probably am on the game…but you just have to figure it out that is what makes this game so fabulous…it’s what makes Days Gone so much fun dealing with the 500 zombies in a horde…or two orcs in Shadow of Mordor and I could go on…you can’t make everyone happy to find that perfect level…but if you scare down the easy…you have to scale all the levels and otherwise you will skew the game itself…sorry guys just a smarter way of doing it

28

I solo Gorilla… and it’s just… boring, really.
If you understand the machines, no matter the class, they mean nothing, pose no threat.
My precvious safe had 91 deaths over 1500kills… in GORILLA mode…
That’s just plain wrong.

Gorilla Mode should be top lethal, not another walk in the park with a chihuahua pup.
And yet, that it is.

I hear many ask for more damage for players, heavier weapons, faster ability to kill things.
OK, sure, not MY thing, but hey, to each his own.
I took out Reap… and while it was an insane bullet sponge… I noticed hardly any lethality from it.
So very wrong, for Gorilla mode!!!
It was, to me, a new disappointment, tbh…

I hope they will -or make Gorilla actually lethal, -or add a Pits of Extreme Doom mode to it.
For the time being I take another break, due to severe lack of challenge in the game.
Well, I will fire the game up every so often when I do not know what to do…

1 Like
31

I normally play solo and offline. I find that I spend a large amount of time stealthing around but have to use game physics. Rocks, trees, slopes (esp slopes) to avoid detection. Most of my moving is crouched. It works most of the time. When that fails, run Forrest run!
I’ve never really felt the game was unbalanced or too hard. Certainly the roaming gangs of hunters are not fun. They too can be avoided by observing movements from a distance and staying low and slow. It is really too bad that shooting the legs of robots does not really slow or cripple them. That would sure help.

1 Like
34

There’s one thing to keep in mind: GZ isn’t Doom, where you need to shoot everything on sight and win every battle. Idea with GZ is, that you have to pick your battles. Also, learning about machines is far helpful that running in, guns blazing.

35

My favorite tactic and 100% effective :slight_smile:

1 Like
36

I often hoard ammo in this game. My storage and self are loaded down because I am full to the brim usually with ammo. I think, as was mentioned earlier, going through all of the bunkers helped me to build that stockpile. I mostly play solo and would avoid the tanks and harvesters in the beginning because I wanted to accomplish the mission rather than taking out every machine I came across.
Leading the battle to a house or settlement helped me usually too as I could hide out and shoot through a window. I understand to some it is a more “cowardly” way or fighting, though to others it is a tactically smart choice.
I was never good about using the gas tanks or compressed air tanks but a friend of mine seemingly mastered that technique and downs harvesters and tanks often using them.
Im more of a “guns-a-blazin” type, but to each their own :slight_smile:

38

Actually, there is only a handful of mission specific machines (excluding ticks) that you have to destroy to finish missions. All other machines are optional and can be sneaked around.

Best source of XP is actually completing missions. Min 1000 XP per mission. Or if you have Inquisitive Mind skill at lvl2, min 2000 XP per mission.

I take that you don’t know that there are first aid kit schematics in the game, that once picked up, lets you to craft all three types of first aid kits, and you get 10 first aid kits per crafting.

Or you can craft any ammo you want, if you find the proper schematics first.

40

From all over the map.

For spoilers, you can look all schem locations from here: Schematics - Fixed Locations

Note, i play on Guerilla, solo, and i’m asking for even harder game, topic: PLEASE add April 2020 Difficulty as an option in the future. So, you asking the game to be even easier than it already is, may give you an idea why i’m not that keen with your ideas.

Btw, i’m not your “bro” and calling a female as a male is disrespectful.

45

Agree to this, there is a point where someone should accept a game is simply not for them. GenZ was always supposed to be tactical and relatively challenging. You don’t go and buy ArmA either if you want an arcade shooter. OP might need to try to see the game for what it wants to be rather than for what they want it to be.

2 Likes
48

I get your idea of discovering items by yourself, i also love it. However, if given that some of these items are critical for your gameplay, to make the hard game easier for you; isn’t it justified that the location of those items is spoiled for you?

Else-ways, we have a strange situation of you complaining about the difficulty of the game (e.g not enough first aid kits) while the solution is given to you but you refuse it since you want to find the solution on your own.

Back in the early days, when i started playing GZ, more than 1.5 years ago, there was no luxury of choosable difficulty level. There was only one difficulty level to all. And there wasn’t even features that made the game easier, like Plundra, Machine Loot, Rivals, Experimental Weapons, Crafting.

Was it hard for me at the beginning? Yes, it was. However, i don’t roll over that easily and when i was kicked down, i got up and kept going. As they say (and no hard feelings): “When going gets tough, the tough get going and the weak start crying.”.
So, i started to monitor machines, sneaking past them, learning about my enemy, saving my bullets. As time (and my progression in game) moved forwards, i learned about the weaknesses of machines, their limits. That helped me to combat them far more effectively.
For a long time, the worst machine to combat with was Hunter. They are fast, agile and devastating. Even the bigger machines, harvesters and tanks didn’t pose as great of a threat as hunters did. But eventually, i learned all the machine tactics and now, i don’t fear any of them. Though, hunters still make me pause and most of the times, i don’t engage them. Or when i’m made and don’t want to engage them, i’ll outrun them (outrunning a hunter is one difficult task to do).

My suggestion; learn about machines. Knowing exactly what you enemy is capable of, is far more valuable than all the gear in the game. :slightly_smiling_face:

Bro is abbreviation of brother. Brother is male.
For females, there is sister. Or Sis for short.

And i guess my female name and pink heart (avatar) isn’t that obvious to all. Oh well.

4 Likes
56

They should at least add more difficulty levels. I’ve been a hardcore gamer for over 40 years and I can honestly say that the current “skirmish” difficulty is about 1-2 notches above normal. I really don’t think the average guy knows or wants to kite 10+ hunters and multiple heavies at the same time. This is what I have been dealing with the last couple of days and that’s still without an experimental .50. I just can’t seem to break combat without having to run for miles so I just kite and kill.

Then to add to all the balancing difficulties we have skill, equipment and weapon progression to throw another spanner in the works. Personally, it would be much better to add weapons as rewards for quests as people progress to more difficult areas. And allow people to start a new game at a higher difficulty rather than putting them on the experimental weapon treadmill.

57

I just signed up to request exactly this - I would love to play this game, but my friends and I have given up after just a couple hours (xbox if it matters). I spend 90% of my time running from a respawn point back to where I died, and often die again on that run. I really like some aspects of the game and would love to go through the whole thing, but on the easiest difficulty, it’s not fun for me. You could make an even easier mode called ‘baby’ or ‘don’t hurt me’ or ‘chill and gen0’. The point would be for it to not be challenging at all, so in that mode, take away achievements/trophies/whatever steam has. Any or all of these changes in a ‘baby’ mode would be great: infinite or more ammo, infinite or more health, no dying or infinite adrenaline. It’s super frustrating to play with a friend but not be able to revive them, even just allowing friend revives would be great.

Instead of a baby mode, you could also add cheats - I’m thinking like the phone cheats in gta5. Again, remove achievements/trophies/etc if a cheat is used.

My friends and I are all parents, we get 1, maybe 2 nights a week to play together for an hour or 2. We would love to be able to explore the world you’ve created and shoot some robots. But at the current lowest difficulty level, it’s just frustrating for us.

58

So, you are saying that you with 2 or 3 other people in CO op, in adventure mode with scaling difficulty off, still have trouble with the game?
The thing is, the game is much more easier now than it ever was, things are ok as they are for most people, the game just requires time and patience, time that you for obvious reason´s does not have, it´s the same with many other games, strategy games require time, survival games require time and the same with Cars games with Resistance races, where it could take from 1 to 20 hours to finish a race.
It takes from 15 to 40 hours for a new player to understand how everything works and to know how to play this game.
You can´t just barge in guns blazing without learning the game mechanics first and expect to not die.
I do understand your situation, the best thing you can do is learn from experience and support each other, which makes everything easier, playing in co op.
I already implied that, but the Host can turn off the Automatic scaling difficult, making things much more easier in terms of machine health and damage.

3 Likes
59

Make sure you guys invest in “Running Speed” skill early on. The kids and I died countless times simply because we couldn’t get away from rocket barrages.

THIS^

60

That´s right, as @jblackball said invest in the Running speed skills, and i suggest the following skiils:

  • Stamina ammount
  • Stamina recharge
  • Carry capacity
  • Health ammount
  • at least level 1 in Salvage skill

The rest is up to you.