[2024] How dev's attempt to prevent cheese now forces to cheese

I: The zombies are too predictable and always go for the weakest point making horde night boring and easy.

II: The zombies are too random and ignore the weakest point and destroy my base in multiple areas!

I'm not sure which claim is ahead after all these years but there are plenty of posts and threads typed for each. Just shows that people are fixated on what they want to believe but the truth is actually somewhere in-between.

I've played this game since Alpha 6 when every night was essentially horde night since the zombies always gps knew exactly where the human players were and then eventually the blood moon horde night was added and through all of it (maybe with the exception of A17) there have always been players who claim that certain base types were impossible even though many other people were clearly doing it just fine. I, myself, still use the same basic base design that I've always used and it still works and I am engaged playing against the horde all night long and not AFK until morning because my base somehow cheeses the system.

I hope you can figure out a base design that feels satisfying and still effective but not cheesy (in your mind).

Originally posted by Tahnval: There are fewer and fewer viable designs for horde bases because the devs will shut down any innovative designs. Which is daft in context. The biggest advantage that a normal human would have over 7DTD style zombies is a far higher mental capability, so that should be the player's biggest advantage. It should be the main thing they use, creating bases that exploit the very limited mental capabilities of the zombies. Pit your strength against your enemy's weakness.

Name the innovative designs that were shut down. I suspect you are just quoting others who are quoting some influencers on youtube who were mad that they could no longer build a base out of sideways turned fence pieces that the AI couldn't target.

There have been changes that have all been based on blocks not performing as intended. Turning a particular ramp block upside down to create a steep face that humans can run up but zombies can't isn't using normal human creativity within the context of the world. It is using a malfunctioning game mechanic to unfairly cheese the event and when that bug gets fixed it isn't the devs destroying innovative base design, it is them doing their job to fix bugs.

Yes, they changed things so you can't just drive around all night but that has nothing to do with innovative base design.

So please give some examples of innovation that TFP destroyed that wasn't based on exploiting bugs that needed to be fixed.

I just turn horde night off. I didn't want a tower defence game anyway and I want a cookie-cutter base to deal with it even less.... more fun for me than a horde night in a cookie-cutter base.... I don't have to return to a cookie-cutter base...Some people like tower defence games and cookie-cutter bases

What is this obsession about avoiding cookie-cutter bases and what does it have to do with playing horde night? I've only tried copying a base design that I've seen on youtube once in all the time I've played (10 years). You act like copying an existing base design that someone else created to cheese the horde is the only option. It's certainly not. One of the great appeals of this game is to create your own horde base and tinker with the defenses and make improvements and figure out what to do.

Turning off horde night is NOT the way to avoid cookie-cutter bases. Turning off YouTube is the way to avoid cookie-cutter bases and then make all the discoveries yourself.

Of course, your whole premise is that supposedly all innovative base designs have been shut down by TFP so it makes sense that you think there is only one or two molds out there that people who play horde night must all be copying.

I'm glad you have found a way to play that is more enjoyable than horde night every 7 days. But your claims that TFP has removed all innovation and the only way to build a horde base is to copy an existing cheesy design are way off.

Originally posted by lalala: I build a normal base with entrance, but after extending it with more extra lines of defense to fall back, now its to large for the zombies to find the entrance, so they dig into the wall. And I'm not talking about a base of 100x100 but very compact, so from length 7 width ~7 it went to length 18 and width 8. They can't path like 5-7 blocks further, which the extension exceeded apparently.

The pathing AI is not uniform across the spectrum of zombies. Some see longer paths than others and all of them can "forget" the path and go into destruction mode at random times. If you damage them they will stop destruction mode and begin pathing again. This is all done by design so that the zombies aren't too predictable. In A17 when the new pathing was brand new all the zombies could see perfect long pathways straight to the player and this created a lot of problems. Since A17 the perfect knowledge of the AI has been dumbed down and made variable so that you get some zombies pathing to you and others not and others generally destroying things around them.

What this means is that if your base has a small perimeter then most zombies will see a path long enough to follow a predictable course to get to you. You can use this to set traps and a killing corridor and all but those that go into destruction mode will find their way to this path. If you make your base perimeter large enough then not all zombies will see a path long enough to get to the path you intend for them to follow. They will start making a shorter path that is the weakest defense that they can see.

So for a large perimeter base you will have to move around to different points and clean up incursions by those zombies that can't see all the way around the base to the corridor that you wanted them follow. If you want more predictability and to be able to confront the horde from one point of defense then you will need to have a smaller perimeter and all the zombies will funnel to corridor you made. It's a choice and you can build to get the result you want. It can be a normal base, an upgraded POI, a copied base from YouTube, or just running around in an open field with no base at all as some enjoy doing.

And the annoying part is that you figure it out only when you're hit by the horde night.

What you call annoying is for a great many others the single most enticing reason they play the game. Analyzing the results of a horde night and then making adjustments to your defenses is the very definition of fun for many people. That doesn't change it being annoying for you, admittedly, but it does mean it is unlikely to change as that gameloop of discovering the weaknesses of your defenses once you're hit by the horde and then spending the next seven days fixing it for the next one is by design and not accident or unintended.

Because the AI has now a lot of condition checks that are not "transparent to the player" there is no predictable way to build a normal base and know that it will work, because moving just one block or standing in a certain port vs. another might differ because of hidden condition X and Y. The pathing distance I mentioned as an example is not the only criterium and sometimes, for unknown reasons length is not a problem suddenly, but something else. Or it luckily works.

It isn't that complex. Zombies have a variable degree of ability to sense a pathway to you. That variability is the length of the path that they are aware of. Zombies that can only see a shorter path will choose the best one they can but it might ignore weaker options that are further away than they can sense while others right next to them can see those weaker options and so those will go to that best option. So you get variable behaviors on horde night.

In addition to that zombies can randomly forget their path and go into random destruction mode plus zombies that cannot sense any path to you at all will also go into destruction mode.

As I stated above, if you want more predictability then build a smaller base so that most zombies will be able to sense a clear path to you. It will surely be the path you have devised for them so that you can kill them with traps and bullets and explosives.

The only predictable way to build a base that works is to copy cat known, working cheese builds...

No, you can build a base with a smaller footprint all on your own without copying anyone-- and how cheesy it is may be open to debate and just personal sensibilities. If you truly want to see what 100% predictability is like then boot up A17 and play through some horde nights. That alpha the horde night zombies had perfect information and were 100% predictable. Maybe you'll really like playing those horde nights. I really enjoyed A17 but I do have to admit that the zombies were like machines. They were scary with how well they could path to you. I remember sitting on a ledge of the hospital and spawning radiated wights on the street below and taking a few shots at them. They would run into the hospital and run the maze through several stories and break through the wall right next to my ledge to get me. Play A17 for predictability...

Originally posted by JM@PT:

Originally posted by Roland: I'm not sure which claim is ahead after all these years but there are plenty of posts and threads typed for each. Just shows that people are fixated on what they want to believe but the truth is actually somewhere in-between.

I've played this game since Alpha 6 when every night was essentially horde night since the zombies always gps knew exactly where the human players were and then eventually the blood moon horde night was added and through all of it (maybe with the exception of A17) there have always been players who claim that certain base types were impossible even though many other people were clearly doing it just fine. I, myself, still use the same basic base design that I've always used and it still works and I am engaged playing against the horde all night long and not AFK until morning because my base somehow cheeses the system.

I hope you can figure out a base design that feels satisfying and still effective but not cheesy (in your mind).

I don't know where you got the "AI randomless pathing", because they definitely made them all conga line to your front door like beggars and we know that well from the few last alphas

It feels artificial, boring when you can just literally path them to the traps/kil zones

They should find a way to balance this by creating a mixture of smart zeds, dumbs that only destroy stuff and some others with new abilities to minimize the need to have a hundred of them to deal the same impact.

This would not only improve the performance (less pathing calculations) but also give variety to the fight, making the horde night a lot more fun and challenging.


TFP just needs to play other survival games and bring the best of them to 7d2d cos this gets old pretty quick

I still remember when they introduced this ridiculousness in A17
https://youtu.be/yE6CaUgGsaw

Just laughably bad

Where I got it from is the coding since A17. You sound like someone who decided to take a break and hasn't played the game since A17. Alpha 21 AI pathing is very different than Alpha 17 pathing. If you don't know that then it is because you haven't played since A17. The OP of this thread is proof that it is different. The OP is literally complaining because the zombies are NOT forming a conga line to head into his predicted defenses and are instead destroying other parts of his base.

Try playing A21 instead of reminiscing about A17.