Progression Barriers

Unturned II U4 Discussion
1

Personally, I think progression is the best part about survival games, starting from your first day being one of fear, as everything and anything can kill you, to being a well adjusted survivor. Unturned 3.0 has very very little progression barriers, as the second you get a chainsaw, zombies are no longer a threat, especially since you can just walk away from everything and just hide from megas. The only progression you can do after that point is to get a gun to kill flaming zombies (both of which you can usually just walk away from) and after that there is no longer any progression against the AI zombies. Obviously U2 should have way more progression than this, as you shouldn’t be able to be on an equal playing field as a guy who has been playing for weeks on the server, against someone who joined 30 minutes ago. A extensive and powerful skill system would be a form of progression, but not a barrier to it.

So my question is, what are possible progression barriers in U2?

4 ways to do this off the top of my head are as following:

Deadzones

A deadzone overhaul would work fairly well, with there being different levels of deadzones, “alpha” deadzones requiring a gasmask to be completely safe, “beta” deadzones needing a hazmat suit and “gamma” ones slowly killing you no matter what, to add another layer of fear as you gotta get in and get out asap. This would be a decent way to add progression without making the enemies directly harder, and if food and water found in these locations are inedible/toxic, it would add another layer of environmental difficulty as you would need to leave these areas and go back to stock up on foodstuffs

Statistical Increases

Another way to add more difficulty would be to increase the hit points and damage of the turned, but have it scale with what gear the player should have when entering the location. As an example, in a starter location every zombie should be a fairly large threat to freshspawns, but fairly easy to take out with a good melee weapon. Mid game type turned would have a decent bit more health than starter turned, requiring stronger melee weapons and even weaker firearms to take out, but in these towns you would find strong melee weapons and guns. This would prevent players from being able to beeline to military bases like you can in 3.0, as they just wouldn’t be able to deal with the zombies in them without looting the previous town, the downside of this being that it would create a fairly rigid looting order, and that it would be frustrating for players to enter a end game area to find out that the turned are bullet sponges.

Variation

Another way would to just add different kinds of turned every time a location gets harder, which would spice up game play but also could lead to some ad nauseam as you would be up against the Nth turned variant, and you can only have so many before they get to samey

Bandits

One other way I have seen being bounced around is bandit NPCs, (which I am against) but it would be pretty strange to walk into a military base to see turned and humans work together, and if it was completely occupied by bandits it would make the turned seem weak, so I assume they would only be wandering around in the wilderness, but would still serve as a threat if done right

Turrets

Another one similar to bandit NPCs would be turrets, like in SCUM or in C:DDA, where an issue in their code make them hostile to normal people. This would be reserved for the highest tier locations, and would usually be at the perimiter to allow turned to roam around inside.

If anyone else has a progression barrier that isn’t something obvious like big maps or hunger and thirst, feel free to share.

  • Deadzones
  • Statistical Increases
  • Variation
  • Bandits
  • Turrets

0 voters

2 Likes
2

Bandits have already been confirmed.

3

Yes I know but this is mainly to see what people think about the various topics

4

Av nu cheeki breeki iv damke.

1 Like
5

oohhh i like all of those answers. Just maybe not turrets. Turrets could be a mod.

6

Different types of Deadzones (with progressively harder enemies as well as radiation) is definitely a yes from me. I like the idea of the final Deadzones still reducing your immunity/rads/whatever even with the best equipment, although it should certainly be slowed down with better gear.

Harder locations shouldn’t just have harder enemies, but also increases in stats; something I think we agree on here.

This makes me a bit confused though. What do you mean by “every time a location gets harder” cause that sounds an awful lot like unfun gameplay to new people joining the server, only to have even the basic towns be super hard because people have been in them for a long time.

I see bandits having their own special areas away from Turned, probably as late-game areas. Turrets I could see being at both Turned and Bandit locations, especially if the Turrets were hidden away from the Turned (either out on the perimeter like you suggested, or inside a vault or other high security building without turned inside of it).

Turrets should come in a few types and be rigged to various security systems. Maybe there could be a version which is corrupted by the Turned, having growths and stuff on it? This would be a way to introduce more mechanical enemies inhabiting the same areas as Turned.

Overall I definitely agree with the majority of what’s been suggested here.

7

I meant early towns would be fairly easy, and then towns further “north” would be progressively harder as you get closer to the end game area, whatever it may be. I did word it poorly looking back on it.

Also yeah security systems would be fun, possibly hacking a turret or something to turn it on the turned would be interesting, or using emp grenades at them to shut them down for a short amount of time.

8

I don’t want to vote

Because I can’t vote for all of them.

9

You can dude lol

1 Like
10

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFU-

voted.

1 Like
11

Davai davai, get out of here Stalker.

12

I’ll ignore the fact that you’ve mentioned only the dangerous progression barriers that could exist. IMO mere survival should be the biggest one, and it comes along with everything such as getting gear, stay fed, stay warm (or cool), basing… Sorting evironment in general and enhancing your skills to sort everthing that comes from there or direct threats that you’ve mentioned. Either way, my 2 cents on these:

  • Different kinds of deadzones should be a thing, since there could be wastelands affected by chemical, biological or radioactive hazards, or more evironmental ones, like volcanic or highly freezing areas, or maybe just harsh to travel, like canyons, mountains and dense swamps.

  • Here I take variation and statistical increases and blend them together, since there should be different types of turned which have different stats each. Like that, the only factor I see that should affect the turned’s stats in general is difficulty, like it has always been. What we should do there is to sort differente turned by rarity or specific locations on which they are more prone to be wandering. I get this idea merely from here, and little to nothing can change my mind about it since it’s for me the best way it could be implemented.

  • Bandits are confirmed and I want to see them in the game. Now, how? Wandering bandits could be a fair threat, but people could see this as a problem, so I suggest that bandits should have their own camps and hideouts, and maybe temporarily roaming around small locations. And about their behavior towards the turned, I think that anything unturned, human or animal, shouldn’t just peacefully wander around along with them (yes, bandits should shoot the turned on sight too).

  • About turrets there isn’t that much I can add on, as we’re talking about apocalypse and there shouldn’t be any functional machinery anywhere within the containment zone, unless it’s owned by players or NPC’s. In that regard, if there were turrets on their own, IMO these should be at maps borders and nowhere else.

13

I feel that there should always be NPC government outposts and that these should be among the places where top-tier loot can be found, but would require either paying a hefty bribe or fighting your way through the entire compound. These would be defended by turrets, among other things, and the airdrop system could also be configured to revolve around this aspect, with the player having to either getting to the airdrop before the military or intercepting a convoy of vehicles, complete with multiple escorts armed with high-tier weaponry.

1 Like
14

I only mentioned dangerous ones as I thought they were the most controversial, basic survival things cant really be talked about anymore due to it being hard to discuss in depth comparisons when its kind of hard to say how much food should matter. (It would be awkward to say “I want to run out of hunger every 20 minutes with x food giving x calories” and things like that, plus everyone wants temperature/a in depth food system so I dont really think it needs to be touched on by me especially when others can make far better posts on it.

Biological things would be fun, I think ive seen areas covered in spores (think stranger things upside down if youve ever seen it) would be really cool

For statistical increases I was thinking about higher tier “standard” turned or just the normal “walker” being buffed, instead of replacing “walkers” with “walkers but stronger” and it being a different variation of turned. This could probably restrict creativity in design, but I think we are on the same page.

Wont really touch on bandits, because I dont really have anything to offer in that topic (because I dont want them)

Turrets in CDDA are pretty interesting in that the reason they shoot people in lore is that their code uses machine learning, and with so many hostile zombies, it eventually machine learned to shoot normal people on sight as well, with turrets on the perimeter of military zones, but zombies on the inside as turrets arent set to shoot into the base, only out of. It would raise the question of when the apocalypse it taking place, which would be a touchy subject as automated turrets are probably a decade or so away, but I think this would make an interesting addition, along with an excuse to have things shoot at you while also dealing with turned.

No disrespect, I dont like this. I want the turned to actually seem like the greatest threat, capable of infecting the highest security military encampment, instead of the government still holding on to their strongest assets. I feel like this would make the turned seem a bit too weak, as if they cant kill the military, why did they really make it that far in the firstplace, and why is the military not taking areas back if they have the funding/manpower to drive hordes of turned away from their base. I would far rather see npc bases selling lower quality gear instead of the best of the best, so that there is still an incentive to loot instead of grinding whatever currency is used in order to pay for loot.

On top of that this idea sounds like one would be raiding bigish NPC bases, which I am also against, which I have mentioned before.

15

These military outposts would be manned by the, and I mean this, the absolute fucking best of the best, the cream of the cream of the crop, attempting to enforce containment policies as best as they can as well as protecting government scientists who are conducting experiments on the Turned, which would explain why they’ve survived for so long.
I want to make it so that you’d either need Sneak 1000 in order to get in and out alive or a literal fucking army, complete with a tank, and even then the soldiers would be armed with antiarmor weaponry and heavy weapons.

16

Problem with that, if you really want to get into it is that I have NEVER seen a first person real time survival game that has good human enemy ai.

I am saying this with absolute certainty that no matter what, bandit npcs will either be aimbots that people will complain about, or braindead walking loot boxes. There will be some form of cheese that will make them a complete joke, and I seriously doubt any programmer could make a fair ai in a “perma” death survival game.

17

Yeah, that was what I was worried about.
Because AI is either aimbot or terrible aimbot that misses all the time.

1 Like
18

If every game has problems with boys, why do you act if there are “good” ones. Also, it’s not that hard to change AI up a bit to make them act more like people.

All you need to do is make them have schedules (ex. Lunch, Randomly heading to the toilets, switching out with other guards) you don’t even need to make them walk across the entire map, only have them walk around in the base on one determined paths unless they spot a person. And make their aim seem at the level you guys talk about. Say they have around 85% accuracy. It would make them seem good, but not perfect. You could also make a sort of come vision going forward from their head, and you just avoid that vision and be fine. If you get out of that line of sight, and hide in a decent spot, you can lose them, but they will be more alert for a short while.

You could also sneak in while they fend off a horde. (maybe the horde could even take out the entire base for you.)

19

Same games have better AI, but most of those games have really small maps so they dont just bake a navmesh on it they make it themselves, which would be really time consuming if maps are big.

“just code them to be good lol”

Schedules would help, but thats just a circuit, unless an area around the path is navmeshed. If it wasn’t navmeshed and was a true circut you could just do something dumb like put landmines on it, or just know when they arrive to avoid them.

The problem with aim and big maps is that it just raises so many questions

How far away should they shoot from? Should they have a chance to not see people in bushes and things? How far is their aggro range? If its too short they can just be sniped, if too long they can just snipe people. How strong should they be? Should they have unlimited ammo? Whats stopping someone from kitting zombies into bandits? Whats stopping someone from kiting bandits into zombies? The questions are endless and each one answered makes the game more CPU demanding.

I dont want bandits.

20

U know, you have to ask the same question for zombies, yet I don’t see you complaining.

Also, they would probably have alternate routes, and if an explosion occurs they would be more cautious-ish(?) of stuff like that. (also, do you really think landmines will be common enough that you would waste in on 1 npc)