Make the easier level of difficulty EASIER

Neither did I. Nobody has engaged in overt name calling, but Aesyle’s thesis statement is this:

This is not Aesyle talking about her playstyle, it is her talking directly to me and telling me what qualifications she thinks I need to have to participate in the conversation - specifically that she thinks that I need to have totally mastered the game to participate in a conversation about a new player’s experience. Our tone is basically identical, but you only take issue with the person who disagrees with you.

Come off it. Aesyle accused me of being so incompetent at that game that only a trivial challenge would satisfy me in the same post that she asserted that total mastery of the game was required to participate in virtually any conversation about it. In context of the rest of Aesyle’s post, her opening line is obviously intended to be insulting.

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Personally, I think you’re going out of your way to be offended by @Aesyle here and while, yes, she is a very seasoned player I’m sure she meant no offense. I certainly didn’t read it that way.

It’s tricky for someone with +1000hrs experience to judge the difficulty for new players. I’ve been watching my son play, who’s just started from scratch on PC and it’s a very different game in the beginning to the late game. And while “adventure” is way easier than the other difficulties it’s not quite as trivial as the description makes out so I think that might be wording issue tbh.

Should it be easier? Maybe they could add an easier mode for those that want to run + gun from the start, but it’s not the game the developers intended.

Personally I preferred it when it didn’t have difficulty levels it just was what it was but I’m totally open to them making it as easy (or hard) as players want, as what I like and what other people like are obviously not the same.

But by tackling the DLC early you’re making it harder for yourself. The DLC is late game content, story wise (and in terms of difficulty) it takes place after the main content.

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But not that knobitobi is going out of their way to be offended by me? I keep bringing up the quote from Aesyle directly stating that she doesn’t think I have standing to even participate in the conversation until I’ve sunk several dozen/hundred more hours into the game, and everyone just keeps vaguely gesturing that surely she didn’t mean to say the things she spent several paragraphs saying explicitly and unambiguously, and I’m not buying it. You have a partisan loyalty to established community members and do not care when they try to shut new voices out of the conversation, but take offense when those new voices call the entrenched community members on their attempted exclusion.

And also an issue with their first, second, and third trailers, their Steam page description, and every other scrap of their advertising campaign I’ve been able to locate. This idea that Generation Zero is supposed to be an immensely tactical and punishing game is not present in any of how Generation Zero sells itself to the general public. The game emphasizes its open world nature and 1980s Sweden setting stronger than its guerilla tactics, and even the guerilla tactics sell the game not as brutal or unforgiving, but just as a stealth/survival game where supplies are limited so choosing your battles is important - nothing to indicate the brick wall of enemy density and difficulty that occurs between the Archipelago and the Farmlands.

If this is the devs’ intention, then someone should probably notify them of, like, basic game design tenets, like “don’t put your endgame content in earlygame areas as part of an expansion which, once purchased, installs and activates itself automatically for first-time players, with no obvious way to disable it.”

But Generation Zero is a well-built game. Looking at the prototype runner as an example: It’s initially the only machine you encounter, it has a wholly unguarded weakpoint close to its center of mass but which is still far from the head and which destroys it instantly if shot. While some more environmental clues scattered about (for example: journal entries from the day of the calamity, written by people trying to fend off the bots, which are already in abundance) would’ve helped make it more clear without resorting to bozo box tutorials, the enemy itself is well-built to clue players in that robots have weakspots, those weakspots aren’t in the head where they usually are, and shooting them is much more effective than hitting the armor.

I doubt a studio who designed an enemy like this just didn’t realize that the expansion they packaged with the main game in a bundle, which installs content into early- to mid-game locations (including the tutorial location!), whose content is activated automatically for new players, and which has no obvious means of disabling it, might end up getting played by new players. Especially since the first couple of missions feature a mix of military and FNIX units, but no apocalypse, and no heavy machines, purely runners and hunters. Not even a particular density of hunters - I’ve run into more difficult packs of enemies (not even heavy machines, just a bunch of hunters) patrolling the Farmlands at random than were sent in any given wave to attack the ringfort in FNIX Rising content.

Protip: If you’re going to join a discussion, don’t start by immediately going on the defensive just because someone doesn’t share your opinions and experience of the game.

I’m going to quote the forum Code of Conduct here;

When an opinion-based discussion is being had, do not state things like “there is no argument” as if your opinion is the only one or the only one that matters. When someone has clearly stated their opinion, do not say things like “Are you serious?” and “Are you kidding me?” Remember, this is not a debate club. This is a friendly discussion community. Allow people to have their opinion. No one is to act as some sort of opinion judge, responding to each one to say whether they agree with it or not or whether or not it is a valid, well thought out opinion.

I recommend to give it a read.

//Mod

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You might find people take the Code of Conduct more seriously if you enforced it against both old and new members of the community - like, you know, maybe the person explicitly stating that someone else isn’t allowed to participate in a conversation until they’ve invested hundreds of hours in the game might be behaving as though their opinion is the only one that matters, y’know, on account of the direct attempt to silence new opinions. Anyways, I’m out, when the mod team takes the perspective that direct insults are permitted exclusively from older members to newer ones, there is no chance of healthy discourse.

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A lot of the issues I have with the game / difficulty, and the ones you’re highlighting are as a direct result of tinkering / reworking the initial areas in recent months.

To be frank, the game as it is now simply isn’t the game sold on the trailers / store page etc. Personally, I miss that game. But having said that, that original game was a lot harder than the one we have now.

The original game was slower, with fewer, but more challenging, encounters and early on it demanded that you played it tactically (or as a group). While it wasn’t ‘Dark Souls’ in terms of difficulty and was never sold on difficulty, it did demand you learned from the early encounters.

However, a lot of people thought the empty / atmospheric opening areas should have more action, and difficulty levels be introduced.

The difficulty levels were contentious, and have been adjusted both up and down in terms of challenge. Some people preferred the harder, some easier and some took offense at the very concept of difficulty levels.

Personally, I’m not bothered if people want it to be a walkthrough or if people want it be really punishing, but at the same time I don’t think that every game needs to tailored to my preference. But I agree that the ‘Adventure’ description makes it sound easier than it actually is. This again is due to it being retro-fitted after the fact and was never part of the original design. I feel the description is “relative to Guerilla” and not particularly accurate.

I love the Souls games, and I’d argue that giving them difficulty levels would help more people come to appreciate them. But at the same time the fact that I find Cuphead frustrating and not for me doesn’t mean I think the devs should make it easier. It is what it is.

The devs have been balancing how to make the game more interesting for new players while attempting to keep late game players interested and I think that the game has suffered as a result.

The suspense in the diaries / audio logs simply doesn’t make sense anymore. The war-torn scenery completely undoes the atmosphere and mystery of the original game.

IMHO the DLC should be gated behind level / story progression but there’s no way that consumer law would permit that. You buy content you should have access to it, but yeah, they should totally signpost that it’s designed be completed after everything else. I’m pretty sure that according to diaries etc. it’s set months after the main story concludes.

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I meant it in general, not towards you exclusively. If a moderator misbehaves we’ll have to talk about it, and I recommend reporting it to an Admin if that happens. But I suppose it doesn’t matter now.

The game got a lot easier.
@ChamomileHasGames
1 year ago it was difficult for some to get ammo.
Now there are bodies and ammo boxes everywhere, but EVERYWHERE.
Now you can add small buffs against damage to clothing and even craft medkits.
Even starting a new game in adventure, it feels a lot easier than on Skirmish or Guerrilla.
The devs can´t make the game even more easy.
Just because a game has an easy mode does not mean it is a walk in the park.
Don´t you die sometimes on COD campaigns? It happens sometimes and it´s one of the most easy game campaigns to play.(all CODs since the Third)
You are not supposed to know everything on the beginning.
That is the same for almost every single game.
What games do you usually play?
If you answer that it might give some clues or not to all of this.

PS: the game was challenging for me on the first 2 weeks, at the time(October 2019) there existed no experimentals, then i started to understand how every machine moves, to listen to the sounds, what weapons works and which one does not, and it started to get more fun and easier.

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guys, I started on adventure because I wanted to kill robots for fun and I wanted the story.
I don’t complain to the devs, “Ohh the robot detection is too high,”
“Ohh the machines keep killing me, fix it now”
“I ran out of adrenaline, DEVVVVVS come HELP”
it’s a game about killing robots much more advanced than the Boston robotics ones, of course it’s gonna be difficult even if your on the lowest difficulty it’s the same with any other fps game
What I’m getting at is: you’re going to die whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to abandon the battle and respawn whether you like or not.
just enjoy the game for what it is you don’t even have to fight (unless you need key cards) just run past that tank or harvester.
I don’t even know what all of you are arguing about, we all play at our own pace.

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and, yeah I agree the game did get quite easier.

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I am finding this game incredibly frustrating, I love the graphics, the atmosphere, and at times, the gameplay, with a real sense of menace, but it is simply too hard: posters can give tips, etc, which is great, but we have paid for this, its seems like one of the games where the devs personality is all over it, so fences, lots of them, ok, but why no wire cutters? didn’t they have then in Sweden, of course they did, I would appreciate an option to see where the safe houses are on the map(one online are too small to see!) Maybe i just haven’t found the ritght weapons, i have the r/launcher, but no ammo. many players may find it easy, ok, but many don’t, Devs have a responsibility to them as well, can’t even find a trainer.

I really want to carry on playing this game, at the moment I am at FT back to Overby Base (from Stora Drybo, just couldn’t get further over big expanse with no cover and many enemy in front) and in a tiny room, with three tanks surrounding it, and thinklng seriouslty of unistalling, which would be a shame.

tanks are slow unless they can sprint, just run past them or fast travel (you can fast travel if you’re not in combat so utilize stealth)

you can easily find ammo on higher level hunters, and if you’re up for it: kill a tank or harvester, I know for a fact that you can destroy a low level tank with lots of ammo and a nice machinegun

flares: use flares. distract them and run, it’s impossible that you’re that far in the game and without any flares or even fireworks.

What machine gun, only have SMG, etc, not 30 cal, etc.

btw, i haven’t been able to change the GUI options, difficulty, etc, when i click nothing happens, i may be playing on the highest difficulty for all i know!

the first tank I ever killed was with 2* AG4 and a 1* kpist I used flares to distract it and ducked in a building for cover it took around 200 bullets for the AG4 and around 100 for the Kpist.
as for your difficulty issue, you may be on an older edition so if you’re all updated then I don’t know what to say, ask a moderator: they know more than me.

I think that’s great, give the player more options, without taking anyway from those who like a harder challenge

@ChamomileHasGames for what it’s worth, I agree with you. Responses to you have been arrogant and condescending and mostly trying to nullify your opinion. There is a pack like mentality here with the regulars being blind to code of conduct mistakes when made by one of their own, but quick to point it out from an outsider.

Since my last reply here caused a controversy, i’ll try to explain in a nicer way, why i said these things in response to @ChamomileHasGames as i said. And perhaps, to clear some bad blood. :slightly_smiling_face:


@ChamomileHasGames, you said that the description of Easy mode didn’t meet your expectations and the game didn’t turn out “a walk in the park” (to say so). You died more than you expected to die and you also struggled when facing Rivals. Thus, game disappointed you when it said in the Adventure mode description that the gameplay would be more story-oriented than combat-oriented.
Here, i agree with you. The difficulty level descriptions could be better.

You also point out that rockets (i guess you mean HE rockets, fired with m/49?), doesn’t live up to their name and you need to use several to take down bigger machines.
Thing with HE rockets is, that they are High Explosive and are intended to use against groups of smaller machines. You can take down bigger machines with HE rockets but since HE rockets aren’t Armor Piercing, you need to fire quite a lot of them, to eventually bring bigger machines down.
There are requests to bring AT version of the rockets to the game, so that m/49 would be more effective against bigger machines but we’ll have to wait and see if devs add those in the game.


You also say how the game should be on Adventure difficulty and especially for solo players. Here, you present your subjective understanding on how games should be when it comes to Easy difficulty.
Thing is, i don’t know from where you come from and what kind of experience you’ve had with other games. For all i know, you probably have played easy games in the past (e.g minecraft) and once you arrived here, the Easy difficulty in GZ is too hard for you, since you’re used to easy games.

That, in itself, isn’t a bad thing since different people prefer different difficulty level games. There are people out there that prefer easy and casual games (from time to time, i also play such simple games), then, there are people out there that want the toughest challenge game can give to them (e.g any regular Dark Souls player) and then there’s middle ground between the two extremes as well.

When i said that i play on Guerilla and prefer it even harder than it currently is - it wasn’t said with an intent to show you that i’m the greatest GZ player. No, not at all. Instead, i said it to show you from where i come from.

GZ is not an easy, casual game. GZ is currently somewhere in the middle. Though GZ used to be a difficult game, when it launched back in March '19. @OBiW4NSHiNOBi described it well how GZ used to be.
I stated to play GZ 1 week after it’s initial launch and things were very tough in the beginning, especially since i didn’t know nothing about machines or which tactics work the best. It took me about 117 gameplay hours, in my own slow pace, to finish the main vanilla missions. I was learning with every step and i never gave up. As the saying goes: “When things get tough - the though get going.”.

I also suggest that you never give up. :+1: If direct attack doesn’t work, try luring one or two machines away from the bigger group and take them out one by one. Or perhaps snipe the machines from afar. There are many different ways how to take machines on.
As far as FNIX Rising content goes, and as said before, it is late-game content. Here, i suggest that you leave it be and go elsewhere. Once you’ve gained more experience and better gear, come back to it since machines aren’t going anywhere. :smiley:

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Yeah, I just finished destroying 5 tanks, 3 were FNIX 1 was mil. and the last one was apoc.
I spent over 30 minutes making the tanks shoot each other so that their health was low enough to shoot at with an actual gun. Once they were down I reaped the rewards. Generation Zero requires patience, as the saying goes," patience is a virtue."

This is going to be a bit of a read (can’t really TL;DR it, sorry), but I hope you have the time for it. Here are some tips I have for any newcomers after playing for over 200 hours and slaying hordes of robots:

General Tips:

  • Be mindful of ammo quantity and type. Always keep an eye on how much you have left and how quickly the weapon consumes ammo. FMJ deals good overall damage to exposed components and weapons, but doesn’t punch through armor very well. Soft point (hunting rifles) and hollow point (some pistols) munitions deal even more damage to exposed components/hardpoints. Armor piercing rounds punch through/destroy thick armor but may take more shots to destroy components. Shotguns are great for taking enemies down quickly at close range. Use 12ga slugs for high damage with precise shots to components at close-long range. Use 12ga birdshot for small, fast-moving enemies at close range. Use 12ga buckshot for general use and to hammer away at Hunters/Runners at close-medium range.
  • Always swap weapons for higher-tier variants. I would recommend keeping your five-crown (gold) weapons if you find a six-crown (pink) experimental variant as they can have some strange properties (looking at you, 6C pump-action :p).
  • When you acquire a blueprint of an enemy type (shown in LOG > COLLECTIBLES > Machine Blueprints) using the binoculars in TECH VIEW mode will show you their internal components and their respective health values. This is extremely valuable information to have.

Example


  • Utilize cover to your advantage. I would recommend staying in the center of a house if you are getting shot at with rockets/mortars as you will be least likely to get hit with the splash damage.
  • Be cautious of gas grenades. Staying in the same spot may be a bad idea if enemies are using this weapon. Although, you may be on the edge of the gas radius, so using healing items to wait it out may be the wisest choice in certain situations.
  • Flares and fireworks are invaluable tools for escaping/reloading/critical strikes. Flares distract enemies’ targeting systems, but enemies will prioritize you over the flare if you shoot them. Fireworks nullify enemies’ targeting systems entirely (white-pink lights) allowing you to shoot them with zero retaliation during their effect.
  • EMP items can be a bit tricky to use, but can help you escape, reload or get a few critical strikes in. These shut enemies in a certain radius (repsective of EMP type) for a short time.
  • I keep my game music off for immersion (I play with stealth indicator off.) and tactical advantage. This makes it easier to hear enemies from a distance and even pinpoint their location if you have a good 5.1/7.1 surround headset.
  • Don’t be stingy with grenades. Fragmentation grenades can deal high damage, are great for killing tight-packed groups and can possibly save you some time to escape if the need arises. Smoke grenades mask your position and can be used to strategically blind enemies when thrown near them.

Misc. Enemy Notes:

  • Most enemy attacks are directly preceded by said enemy emitting a specific sound/roar. Sometimes the sound can glitch and you won’t hear it, but this doesn’t really occur unless you are in a robot “mosh pit” lol. Take care to memorize the sounds they make and you will be better prepared in your robo-murdering adventure!

  • Memorize component locations. Weak points will be dark purple/blue spots when viewing enemies through a scope/binoculars with an IR module attached (sorry if you/I are/am color blind :p).

  • Look out for round fuel tanks/cells on enemies. These are extremely vulnerable to attacks and will explode, dealing critical damage or killing the enemy. Be wary of destroying this component or enemies at all near cars, as they will explode along with the enemy.

Fuel Cell Locations







  • Tick pods can be present on Hunters, Tanks and Harvesters. They look like a large, rectangular box mounted horizontally to their back. Shooting them (can be shot from the front) on hunters will knock them off. Destroying them on the other enemy types will set them on fire and make them emit sparks/smoke.

Enemy Specific Tips:

  • Ticks (small quadrupeds) are small and a minimal threat when fighing one on one. Shoot their fuel cell on their back to kill them near instantaneously. Higher tier models have light armor protecting them from frontal attacks. They may not seem like much of a threat, but are extremely dangerous in groups.

  • Seekers (floaty floats) have a long sight distance. These are the scout units for the robots. While extremely weak , they will alert nearby enemies of your presence and call for reinforcements. It is best to take them out silently and quickly.

  • Runners (dogs) are fast and agile. They travel in groups and can deal a substantial amount of damage if they catch you off guard, in the open or both. While difficult, you can shoot their gun off, but they can perform a headbutt type melee attack that can really mess you up.

  • Hunters (humanoid biped) will prioritize charging and melee attacks when you destroy their right arm hardpoint. They may still use their shoulder weapon (if they have one) if you keep your distance. These units are extremely deadly in groups! As of this posting there is a bug where they can clip through buildings and hurt you with melee attacks or just completely teleport into buildings (mostly barns) behind you.

  • Tanks (biped dangly bois) will become nearly useless when you shoot off both of their dangling hardpoints. However, they will still charge at you when given enough space to do so. Higher tier tank models may disperse gas/fire as an AoE attack if you get too close. If the tank has a weapon mount that looks like a single, large tube, that is a single-shot mortar. These are extremely easy to dodge, but deal quite a bit of damage if hit. If the weapon mount looks like two stacked columns of square holes, this is a multi-rocket launcher. Take extra care to avoid this. The machine guns are, well, machine guns.

  • Harvesters (large quadrupeds) are about the same as the tanks when you shoot their back-mounted missile pods off. While the pods can sustain quite a bit of damage with the higher tier models, destroying them can give you time to breathe. Make sure to put some distance between yourself and a harvester before you take a breather, as some Harvesters retain a gas/fire AoE attack. Some can call in Hunters from drop pods, but Harvesters are all extremely slow. Take advantage of this when you can.

I know I’m a month late to reply, but I hope this helped even a little bit :smiley:

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This extremely thorough :+1:

For the Ticks I might add to shoot the legs if they are standing and don’t recognize you. Sometimes it’s hard to reach the fuel cell but a shot with the Meusser or Älgstudsare right on a leg will destroy the tick.

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