Game is more difficult

[nath2009uk]

I was in that small room, near the trader, on the floor under the spawn point on Biolabs.
(You know, the small one door 2 windowed room, near the stairs.).
I was in there, with the door shut, shooting out that window, and all of a sudden a group of bloats spawn right behind the door, about 10m away from me.

Surely that can't be right.

 

[ZetsumeiSol]

The game is actually challenging now! OH NOES! Well.. Not really.. But much better than before .

 

[Evilsod]

I'm all for making things harder, but seriously the spawning in this game only got worse with the update. It was bad enough before on say, Offices, where if your team lost sight of the room beyond the broken wall on the ground floor for a moment something would spawn in it no matter how close you were. But now, things have actually started spawning BEHIND you.

Making things harder is 1 thing, but the spawning seriously needs to be sorted out. It gets stupid when you turn the corner from an EMPTY corridor then turn around again just in time for a Husk that wasn't there 2 seconds ago to shoot you in the face.

 

[Nenjin]

*shrug* I haven't noticed anything odd with spawning since the patch, after about 30 hours of play. There are many ways to tweak map difficulty through spawns...including how long of a gap there is between one group dying and the next spawning. You ratchet that number down one notch and everything gets harder.

So like most things in this update, I think people are having knee-jerk reactions to many of the changes...and most of 'what's wrong' is based on suppositions rather than hard facts.

Each difficulty definitely seems harder. But I haven't noticed any more or less Z.E.Ds magically appearing from nowhere.

 

[_COMRADe]

*shrug* I haven't noticed anything odd with spawning since the patch, after about 30 hours of play. There are many ways to tweak map difficulty through spawns...including how long of a gap there is between one group dying and the next spawning. You ratchet that number down one notch and everything gets harder.

So like most things in this update, I think people are having knee-jerk reactions to many of the changes...and most of 'what's wrong' is based on suppositions rather than hard facts.

Each difficulty definitely seems harder. But I haven't noticed any more or less Z.E.Ds magically appearing from nowhere.

Obviously, the spawning will be different with each players experience, but unfortunately I have to take the side of the "oh god damn it" players.

I was playing a solo on Westlondon as Sharpshooter getting my last 250 kills to level 6 (got them!) and had holed up in the church, as usual welding one door and guarding the other. I know there's a window that the occasional zed gets through in the back of the church, so that's all well and good, but I was sitting on the stairs that faced the street and watched two Fleshpounds spawn behind the goddamn LAMP POST. Sorry TWI, I love you, but that's just not right.

By the way I survived that round, level 5 sharpshooter with EBR can take out a Fleshpound before it gets close and reload in time to kill the other after only taking enough hits to *almost* kill you.

 

[Nenjin]

It happened before the patch too. Normally Z.E.D spawns are sight and range dependent. Occasionally that gets mucked up because the game reads the spawn as zero visibility when the object blocking the spawn doesn't totally obscure it. Like I said, I haven't seen it happening more often.

Although that window spawn in the church does seem to produce specimen more frequently now.

 

[driftwood]

Rather than everyone (with exception of Nenjin) blindly excepting that zeds can now spawn on top of you, has anyone got an ounce of proof of this. Some kind of teleporting ability would have been a major programming job to implement and would be enough of a new feature to make an appearence on the change log, where I did not see it.

Be aware of the following rules for spawning and tell us if you still believe they are 'teleporting':
1) Zombie spawns have a 'minimum distance to player' setting and as the name suggests should not spawn zeds if player is within that range. Because this is a setting that can be changed, mappers can choose to make zombie spawns active when player is really close (generally do this if you want crawlers spawning in a vent when player is directly below)

2) Zombies do not spawn if there is no geometry (like a wall or whatever) in between the player and the spawn location, so a zombie cannot spawn directly behind you although they CAN spawn directly behind a corner

3) All the official maps are littered with zombie spawns in hallways and player accessible rooms, not just in out-of-bounds areas (a design decision I don't really like actually). So yes a Zombie can spawn very close to you under the right conditions.

What I don't see after playing several hours is any evidence that spawning has changed. What I did see was 90% players are noobs even on hard servers so you feel like you have to kill every zombie yourself, and unless you are real pro this usually means not getting half way through a game.

 

[Cizjut]

After reading this thread i can confirm Waterworks has the zombie spawnpoints wrong. I thought it was only me. Yeah, the spawnpoints are strange in all of the maps, and don't work properly, thus giving an unfair difficulty in the game because some clots spawned behind me when i was not looking just 2 seconds ago. The damage then, it's ok, but the fact you are always cornered with this leaves nothing to do, as crawlers fall above you and every other zombie is in the room with you as well.

 

[Evilsod]

Rather than everyone (with exception of Nenjin) blindly excepting that zeds can now spawn on top of you, has anyone got an ounce of proof of this.

Sorry but... how? Should i post a screenshot? Because i'm not exactly gonna get fraps and run that all game.

I've seen things spawning far too close several times but normally behind an obstruction. Biotics Lab is terrible for things actually spawning in plain sight. During 1 of the Fleshpound waves they practically spawned on 4 of my allies near the spawn resulting in 1 death and on another game a Husk spawned behind me in plain sight of 4 people around the corner.

 

[Zetsumei]

what i have seen since the patch. Is sometimes the specimen get spawned and you just happen to get there and slightly see them still falling down a little from the spawn.

I notice that they dont all walk towards me in the shortest route but half of them actually deliberately takes another route.

Another thing that might be possible is that specimen far out of sight might be getting respawned.

I dunno what was changed but they come more from all sides after initial spawning. Rather than first they spawn, then the rest of the game they follow you in a big trail and all pretty much come from one side.

 

[Nenjin]

It must only be noticeable when you have them coming from more than two directions. Played offices dozens of times the last few days, and the top of the stairwell between 2nd and 3rd gets 75% of the wave, while the bottom gets much much less.

 

[[UIT] Akame]

The aggressive spawning (sometimes too aggressive) is nice but once you get the new weapons, particularly the AA12 (wave 3-4 with level 6 on hard), even wyre and bedlam present little challenge once you find good places to defend.

It aint friendly fire if it aint at least 40%. Try that on hard.

Well it was whatever you have your server set on. We rarely hit each other and I rarely play FF server so I don't know exactly what it was.

 

[Nenjin]

once you find good places to defend.

This is the kicker. There are very few 'good' places to defend in either of those maps. There are defensible places, sure, but they require more work than say, Bioticslab, and they aren't as readily apparent. Most of the good camp spots we've found require one guy welding a door non-stop.

 

[SpurryMoses]

I think this does have the possibility of being a good feature. But in it's current state, well, there's a fine line between making things harder and making things plain annoying.

Exactly, I would much prefer all the creatures were faster and more deadly than be raped by a sudden magical appearance of 25 zombies in a hallway I'd just checked as "all clear" 3 seconds earlier.

I do appreciate, however, this may helps even up the new Demolition perk - team wise.

And I should also report, that I'm getting to levels 9 and 10 now. Only getting killed because I'm "over-keen" to use the grenade launcher. It's so satisfying, I can't help it.

 

[Cizjut]

Just a tweaking in the spawning and the game will shine again. It's not that it's hard really, i mean, harder is good, but not the fact i just looked around the corner, nothing there, and suddenly, there are crawlers, tons of them, ready to hop, and clots grabbing me in all directions from out of nowhere. Of all the issues introduced in this patch, the sudden spawning is the one that needs more attention right now, and maybe the loading times.

 

[SketchyPhoenix]

I have been in offices yesterday and while in one of the 3rd floor rooms, two clots spawned right in the room with me. Not that they were there when I turned the corner, but quite literally I was in the room and boom, two of them appear about a few inches off the floor and descend upon me. I thought that was just.. odd.

 

[Bandit451]

Sorry for Ressurecting this topic from the dead, but I just registered and this is an issue I have noticed and been repeatedly annoyed by.

The Spawns in this game have always been terrible.

I remember when I first bought the game, before the Medic lost much of it's speed to prevent kiting, I remember seeing bloats spawn beind those tiny trees in Manor. Just Poof! with his fat clearly showing around the sides of the tree.

I thought it was getting better, but with the Level Up DLC, things just got crazy. Things will spawn just out of sight, or right behind you. In one instance in Bedlam, I was covering a door, when I realized that the specimines were spawning in the space created by the open door and the wall, and turning around and attacking me, less than five feet away. It was silly, and considering how cramped many of the Official maps are, its a big problem.

And as for the relocating of specimines, i'm all for it. Many times at the end of wave, there will be a crawler or something stuck in an air vent and we will have to find it, or something dies because it is too far away. I'd be happy if that stopped, but I don't want them relocated on top of me.