This Game is Run & Gun only

General Discussion
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So, love the game when I’m playing Run & Gun. I don’t love it when I’m playing an engineer, hacker or commando though.

This may just be my opinion, but it seems that everything for the story and combat are being worked on, but the 3 items I mentioned are NOT.

Do a simple experiment. Take everything in the commando tree and everything in the hacker tree. Hide, OUT OF COMBAT, and hack a machine. Make sure it didn’t see you. Then while it’s getting into combat with other machine, SNEAK into another building or something where it’s IMPOSSIBLE that any of the machines observed you in any way…then when the hack clock is over, watch every single machine that was in the combat target you.

I’ve done this very thing multiple times and the only times I was able to make anything worked is if I picked a building with no windows and closed doors. If I leave a door open, they know where I am. If I’m anywhere near a window, even if there is NO Line of Sight, they find me somehow. It’s frickin magical how these machines can ignore that I’m not visible and track me somehow when they’re not in searching mode.

The game’s mechanics, the basic mechanics aren’t just combat. There are still a bunch of houses that have light switches that don’t work. When I’m inside sneaking around, I purposely turn off all the lights so I can see better at night. Is anyone looking into this? It’s minor, yeah, but for a playstyle that’s other than Run & Gun, it’s an important detail.

Machine AI - When hacking a machine, they don’t seem to attack one another as aggressively as they attack a player. There should be AI just for the hacking skill when it’s active. This is a basic mechanic of the game, and it’s amazing how well a hunter can target me through any wall, door or window and hit me accurately, but can’t seem to hit an non-moving runner with more than a single bullet. I say it like that because it’s just a single bullet that hits them every time and I don’t understand that. It makes me believe there is a difficulty scale or something that governs whether they hit or not, and for other machines, all their weapons are set to miss except for that 50 cal on the hunter. Now that works right. Rest of the weapons are a gamble, but if you hack one of those, it’ll actually destroy something. I think there is something overlooked with hacking that makes machine vs machine on an easy mode or something. The 50 cal was brought later, so maybe it is governed by different mechanics. Maybe there’s a setting on it that doesn’t apply to any other attacks. I’d be interested to have someone explore that and figure it out, cause hacking as it is right now is pointless.

Engineering is underpowered. You get a tick pod. Woopie! Now you can deploy a small machine that doesn’t seem to know how to attack other machines in much of a meaningful way. It’s not a distraction, as once you deploy one, every machine in the vicinity will now target you, regardless of whether you’re in a building or visible, or detected at all. The ticks do seem to attack other ticks pretty well, and I think they’ve improved somewhat over time, but they’re still nothing awesome. You’d think an engineer would collect parts and build his own runner or something. A boy and his dog going out to hunt…with a repair option. That would make the engineer somewhat worthwhile to play, if the machine vs machine AI improved.

Would also be nice to see what skill applies to what in on the UI. I mean, when I highlight the explosive engineer skill, it’d be nice to see what they’re talking about. Rockets get the bonus, sure, that makes sense. What about grenades, what about gas canisters, what about components that explode on machines when I shoot them? Same with EMP…if I shoot the side of a house, is that affected? What about the exp 9mm? Do I get bonuses from both the extra component damage from the hacker tree and single shots with my ag4 exp if I pick the next to last skill on the first combat tree where single shots give upto a 10% component bonus? What if I take the commando specialization on top of that. First hit gets the 15%, and 2x 10% on top of that if I’m targeting a component such as a gas tank, and if I have the explosive bonus, does it factor in? I could make a really awesome build if I knew what everything did. Otherwise, the game seems designed and continually developed for mostly just combat. There’s no doubt what every single skill does and what it applies to in the combat branch.

I’d love to snipe a machine, hide, wait for a few minutes, do it again until I’ve picked off an entire squad. Maybe using the first level of hacking to take the aggro off from time to time could be useful. Problem is, you hit one, destroy it or not, and hide the best you can, they’re all coming for you. I can’t deaggro, even if they don’t see me, they somehow see me.

I think this sends a clear message that if you’re not playing with guns blazing, you’re playing a buggy game where the mechanics don’t seem to work right. Is there anything I can do to influence these things and have someone look into them? I don’t think there is.

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Since I favor a sneaky gameplay with Meusser and Älgstudsare I never bothered with Engineering etc. I focus on skills that help with my way of playing the game. I did try the run and gun playstyle but this was just not my way.

That being said I also turn off all light switches and it annoys me a lot that they’re still not fixed. I think this cannot be done globally but a dev has to edit all houses and all lightswitches there to work correctly. This is a lot of work and the devs already fixed a lot of switches but I wouldn’t expect them to go through every house.

Yes, this game has bugs and yes the machines need a revamp in AI desperately (they got a minor improvement in the last update where one machine out of a pack stays at a distance and tries to shoot you from there while the others try to attack you from up close) but I wouldn’t focus too much on them. I had my struggle with it too and almost quit the game when I decided to let some bugs work in my favor and try to ignore most of them waiting for an eventual fix.

What you can do to help is reporting bugs either by opening a new bug ticket or by adding information to an existing one. The more feedback the devs get the easier they can decide to put someone on it.

Although I would love to have the devs to work on all of the bugs first and add things later that would probably mean they would loose quite the player count and then it wouldn’t be worth to develop new things. The devs have to manage the balancing act to fix bugs and at the same time include a bit new to the game to keep it interesting.

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so i found where you messed up on this experiment after reading it half a dozen times… ‘’ tool tip for Hacking is they temporally become confused… ‘’ After we all have been testing this they will become hostile and target you immediately but instead of taking HACKER take COMMANDO instead… doing that Temporally Confused state = Unware status being put on the enemy at that current time… I.E. your time to do damage excessive damage… now lets combine this w/ Designated target and Component damage Skill shots become exquisitely vital when taking then… Make sure you use ‘HOLD BREATH’ if not cap you have 8 secs of no weapon sway. Now Range is an issue .243 falls off 1/10ths of a mark per 100 meters. if your using a low end suppressor you have maybe 2 shots 1 from Commando w/ Designated target and 1 w/out Commando but with Designated Target to take out the Target… As soon as you Fired PRONE PRONE PRONE PRONE… the targeting range of the enemies goes down significally when your in a prone state. the one grenades’ oddly you can toss without nobody is a SMOKE grenades’ deceases your visibility by a ton.

The build going like this:
Combat ZERO
Support (L) 1,1,1,2
Survival (L) 2,1,2,1 Hopefully we will get Back apparel items with a backpack Schematic for Upgrades
Survival (R) 1,1,2,2,1,1 Commando Perk
Tech (L) 2,1,2,1,1 (R) 1,1,1,1,1

For the clothing schematics since we skipping the Combat tree in favor of the Designated target for Completing our kills. We need BULLET 10% Explosion 10%. If your committed to the full sneak style then push it 10% noise 10% visibility.

Loadout .243 5* , (quietest Rifle in the game… ) pvg for BIGGS explosive , SMG 9 MM expiermental Explosive AMMO. Quietest gun in the game. 9MM Pistol w/ Shock setting up traps for impending fight (works as cripple) .32acp for Corrosive, this oddly makes blind. to your movements Trick here is pop one on each reach quick. fireworks and SMOKE and run like hell to trees or rock outcropping and soon as you get there and PRONE.

Order of the KILL: Drones, Ticks, Dogs, Hunters.
Tag:Hack: Kill prone wait repeat.

for HARVESTORs TANKs and REAPERs (rockets are first) on all of them. they can explode your traps.
Large FULL CELL 4x 2COMPRESSED AIR tank(this is a hidden fact of the game) Explosion’s needs what to make it Colossal. way to ignite and Air. reason y Compressed air tanks are the lowest damage number in the game compared to Landmines because individuals don’t know the DEVS are mad scientist when coming w/ traps. Anyways this combination will severally damage all 3 of the above. Shouldn’t be a problem setting up since we are master sneaks. ____ now the COMMANDO perk will be added tot the damage modifier of the 10% explosion damage the designated target explosion. ______________ BIG Fight proceedings ____ Monitor movement and direction of the TARGET___ Set trap___ Binoculars TAG____ patience BOOM! ___TARGET rockets and lay them in. Tanks and harvester’s will be similar in difficulty level because the blast hits the undercarriage of the mech instead of the overall damage. SO a tank his gun’s and knees will be hit worse than a harvesters rockets but equally to a harvesters fuel pods it will balance out.

Now biggest issue not the Reaper himself… but HUNTERS i still haven’t found a way to one shot a hunter. Yes you can LURE to a big boom! w/ you hiding behind smoke.

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I seen that another update came out and I decided to check my topic here to see if there is anything useful on it.

Let me clarify the example I gave for use of the commando tree and hacker tree. I gave that example to demonstrate that even in the most extreme situation, there is no room for any other playstyle but Run & Gun. I invite everyone to try this yourself. Get all the skill in commando maxed out and get the hacker skill. Hide in a building with machines across the field. Use tech view to make sure none of them are in searching mode or anything. Peek up once to hack one of them and hit the ground and don’t move a muscle. Don’t fire a single shot. Start inside a building and stay there. When the hack wears off, all machines in the vicinity should know that one of them malfunctioned and, at best, should be in search mode trying to figure out what happened. They didn’t know you were there before, and they certainly shouldn’t know you exist afterwards either. Instead, all of the machines go aggro and magically swarm your location in combat mode. Why are they in combat mode? How did they divine my location or suspect there was any involvement from a human at all? None of it makes sense and if they were thinking it through, it would have been changed a long time ago.

Also, if you max out commando, that poses another problem. If you are playing a sneaky build, you should have the ability to fire off a single shot, hide, and the machines should only be in search mode cause they haven’t a clue where that bullet came from, but that is not the case. They aggro and swarm. They don’t know where the shot came from. They don’t know where to go, but suddenly ALL OF THEM know your exact location and somehow track you, even if you’re unseen or undetectable. It’s magical. Sweden has magical machines who can do things we have yet to develop machines to do today.

It’s kinda like the game devs invented skill trees to lure different types of players to their game for marketing and profit, then only focused on a single line of game development. It’s the old bait and switch. You’ve balanced combat mechanics, damage values, added more guns, more machines, and base building. It’s like the game devs are only focused on reinventing ways to put bullets in machines…and that definitely not how the game was marketed to me. I was given the idea that I could be an Engineer or Hacker and outsmart the machines. I was told I could sneak around them to get an advantage. I was told I had different play options. Basically, you just run around and shoot things. That’s Generation Zero.

Look at the game development and see what new content has been made for Generation Zero. You’ve gotten more guns, you’ve gotten melee weapons, you’ve seen damage and combat mechanics fixes, and you even have more machines to figure out new ways to fill with bullets. I should be making builds for this game with special weapons the Engineers get to use and come up with…because they’re engineers, that’s what we do!!! Where is the exoskeleton an engineer would come up with? What about anything other than a stupid tick pod? I find it hard to believe that machine tech is all that was developed by the military. How about medical tech a Medic build can use? Stuff that can keep himself and other alive, like maybe the military was experimenting with area healing or shielding to reduce damage with different devices? I should be making a build for a Commando who takes a shot, disappears, scouts around, takes another shot and disappears again unseen. NO aggro, just searching mode cause they can’t figure out what happened because I’m skillful like that. I should be making a hacker build who hacks a machine with a couple of programmed responses. Lead others machines away or in this direction, attack other machines, explode and freak out, etc. Why hasn’t this been thought of or developed? When the hack wears off, they should be in searching mode, not magically locating me and being straight in combat mode. That’s stupid and doesn’t make sense and it’s not fun to play. All the machines should know if one of them had a glitch and they don’t know why.

Can you outsmart the machines to win? NO!!! The game just has an Engineering tree there as a novelty only. You deploy a tick pod, you’re going to be VERY LUCKY if it damages any machines. They WILL swarm you to punish you for thinking you can distract, fool, or use your skill in any advantageous way in the game. Nothing is being developed to make your skills viable to winning. Your combat damage bonuses sure do apply reliably though.

After uninstalling Generation Zero and playing some other games, I found a good example of a game that started out similarly, but developed totally differently. The difference in 7 Days to Die is that the skill trees and game balance was fleshed out. You can play an Agility build where you get bonuses to sneak around zombies and get damage bonuses to zombies that don’t detect you.(much like any game with sneaky elements should have, like the playstyle is in countless games, even WoW) You get weapons that are tailored to your playstyle. You have a knife and bow for stealth killing. You have an intellect skill tree where you can use a baton(sucks), and turrets as your weapons where outsmarting and using traps to employ against the zombies is rewarded. There is a strength tree and fortitude skill tree. Insane how similar the initial development plans are between the games. What’s different is the game devs for 7 Days to Die have taken the time to develop game balance for different kinds of players to enjoy their game the way they wanna whereas with Generation Zero, you have a few skills that punish you for trying to play any other style than Run & Gun.

I seen the new video for the latest update. I see a trailer with some players running and gunning around like they don’t have a single intelligent thought in their poor empty heads. Nobody is acting like they want to survive; casually jogging around explosions with guns blazing. They’re just running around shooting like it’s a bad 80’s action movie where the hero is just about invincible with no regard to much of anything.

If the game devs aren’t going to support features they came up with originally, they should take those features away. Plain and simple. I wouldn’t have bought the game or the DLCs if I knew they were going to just use the promise of different playstyles and skills to get players to buy the game and I feel cheated that new developments haven’t been made in ALL THIS TIME to support any other types of gameplay. I mean, is this really the end product of the game? Machines just swarm for no logical explanation and swarm in on you and combat is the only viable way of dealing with them? Doesn’t sound like a very intelligent option, and it doesn’t sounds like a very good game.

I don’t play Generation Zero right now, and I don’t want to. New guns? So what. Same game reinventing ways to put a bullet in a machine. BORING!!! I want to play a game where the devs develop ways to outsmart your opponent instead of merely outgunning them…and the way the mechanics and content has been developed since inception, it is clear that we’re seeing a narrow minded development towards Run & Gun. Any other way of playing the game is simply punished.

Seriously, if the game devs were thinking about game balance and supporting their skill trees for the employment of alternate playstyles, we would have seen some different game development. Off the top of my head I’ve given some really solid game mechanics ideas a few lines up. It’s solid that after a hack the machines should go into searching mode instead of swarming. I mean, that’s just a DUH moment. Like, that should be a given. They should go into searching mode to make the commando tree viable…and only if he shoots while even a single one is in searching mode should they swarm…and that should also attract the flying narcs to investigate the source of the attack. That’s why a commando shoots, repositions and shoots again. That’s just how it’s supposed to work. Simple. Medics should have more than just a stupid ability to revive and use packs. Where is the experimental tech for them? If their minds were in the total development of the game, we’d see something new to cater to the skill trees THEY CAME OUT WITH in the first place, but we’re not and I doubt we’re going to see anything else but a 80’s FPS. The only meaningful character customization in the game is how you look and the bonuses on your equipment.

I’m sure to offend someone with these comments, but someone needs to be saying these things. The game devs have taken what this game could have been and turned it into a FPS where you collect tiers of weapons to shoot tiers of mobs. We now have a bunch of different bullets to put in a variety of machines…and that IS how you win. All other skills will punish you and force you to play a Run & Gun playstyle.

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At it’s core, Generation Zero has always been “shoot robots with friends”. It’s a slow burn from the start, but picks up speed quickly. You can however pick your battles, and approach combat depending on your own playstyle.

I’ll offer some advice; this is a discussion forum, not a blog. Keep your comments just that, comments. People are going to be discouraged from your topic if they are presented with a wall of text that looks like a rant. That’s not something that encourages discussion on any level.

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I did read the latest comment though…

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i actually agree w/ you personally i think Vanguard is totally overpowered skill and besides the fact that its on 24/7 if they did where you reach a certain threshold like 30% of your life left you get Vanguard activated as a Elite Skill. At the End of the Day it is a skill doesn’t suppose to change the game to Easy Mode. Hopefully we get a upgrade to Commando where if they are not attacking the damage still counts so a shot from range of 300+ yards is a viable way to engage the machines. I personally really enjoy this game the Heart-Races on Gorilla Difficulty of only you when you planning your escape routes… As well after doing some thorough testing in different guns and attachments i find that the Snipers are set to 300 range regardless of Scope… the Weapon drop ‘bug’ wasn’t there just people where engaging at a much closer distance and they supposably bullet risining. It was the Arch of the bullet set to 300. But this being said Some Skills can be overlook and not taken anymore. Vangaurd ‘hate it’ you can actually achieve the similar % buffs w/ the the skill points in Combat and Gas Resistance and threw clothing… so Vanguard doesn’t have to be taken at all. As long you put the time in getting the schematics. Also Marksman skill tress can be totally mitigated just by holding your breath. Now we have Engineer probably it should be done away w/ the creation of ticks as a schematic hopefully we we get something more viable… Hacking thinking it needs a rework Calmness should increase the odds and type of Variant of the machine it is…also on the subject of hacking should go off the visible range of the target to the robots on if they are detected or not. Real Question, ? , should hacking recharge time be set to your stamina bar on how often it can use…?

This game may-be run and gun because it rewards that style of play… I like setting up a shot 300+ yards, Designated target them, ‘pop smoke’ and hope for the best… allot of times i am not scene or Attack from the robots its a very rewarding experience

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I have a run and gun char and a commando which I use mostly for solo. I crawled up to a group of hunters that were sniping at Russians and, laying there within about 30 meters, I shot one of the hunter’s railgun off his shoulder with a .50 sniper rifle.(I don’t use the hunting rifles because, to me, they’re too weak and it takes too many rounds to kill something big even with exp ammo) He screamed his robot rage and ran off to attack the Russians. Lying prone, using cammo and sneak clothing, I’m often able to take down tanks and harvesters if I’m at range. Once they find me, of course, it’s run and gun. But if I run a few yards and crouch it hides me a lot of the time and, using my exp A4 with silencer, I can shoot one to another target while they’re looking around to find me. It’s not 100%, of course, so I took run speed so I can out straffe their weapon fire sweep. It works pretty well. I have to heal less often than my “tank” (I use that term pretty loosely). I haven’t tried hacker and I was tempted to get the tick box but ultimately took run speed instead and, for that build, it was the right choice.

A bit of an edit, here. I even put a silencer on my exp KVM so I can ambush groups that are clustered together like hunters do. Runners tend to spread out in more of a skirmish line so it’s hard to get them close together.

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That’s exactly how I do it.

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Same here but I my main character is a van guard with a lot of marksman skills.

Solo I play a sneaky sniper most the time and in co-op I play run n gun with a lot of smash and grab mixed in for the loot I use.

Really nice thing about GZ when you have everything done and collected is how you can change up playing styles to fit your mood. Anything else you have to play different games to match your mood.

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My main is, too, I maxed out most of both combat lines with him with some carry weight and use damage resis clothing. With his shotty I use buckshot and get in closer and compensators instead of silencers since I don’t care about being quiet,