Imrpovements for the Alpha 17.1 and general ideas

[Andresdbr]

First of all, I'm in love with this game, so I would like to share some ideas, both mine and from other people in the hopes of reaching a Developer to read this. I will focus on solo/private multiplayer gameplay.

 

Alpha 17.1 Issues (not bugs)

 

1. Vehicles

1.1 Speed

Issue: Vehicles are too slow. The motorcycle and the 4x4 are almost equally slow, and there is no virtual difference between them except for rock crashing and storage.

Idea: Increase vehicles' standard velocity. Add mods to vehicles aswell,

1.2 Damage resistance

Issue: The 4x4 takes a ton of damage by crashing into any kind of rocks or debris. Gotta use 2 repair kits to cross the destroyed city biome.

Fix: make the 4x4 truck more resiliant to crash damage.

1.3 Damage to zombies

Issue: All vehicles do virtually no damage whatsoever to zombies despite the badass staky armor they have.

Fix: Increase vehicle rundown damage to entities. A normal zombie shouldn't survive being run over 4 times by a 4x4 truck, but being killed in a single hit with a club.

1.4 The gyrocopter:

Issue: The gyrocopter controls are too difficult to handle appropiately, making it a 100% crash landing vehicle. Thats because of how the controls work. Problem is, S does not slow it down fast enough, you have to keep pressed W to keep it turned on and flying.

Fix: As with other vehicles, the vehicle should remained turned on once it is started up. Space bar for lifting up, C for going down, W for accelerating, S for braking. The breaking needs to be fixed in order to reduce the velocity of the aircraft a LOT faster, but also keeping it in the air. Very much like a helicopter.

1.5 The 4x4 Shotgun driver:

Issue: Character is static. Shotgun driver should be able to aim and fire at pursuing zombies.

Fix: Make the shotgun drive be able tu look around, aim and shoot his guns in first person camera.

 

 

2. Guns

2.1 Gun Mod:Rod & Spring Replacement

Issue: It has no practical effect on increasing the firerate of the pistol or marksman rifle. I'd expect it to dramatically increase the fire rate, and coupled with an Auto trigger mod, to become something like a glock automatic pistol.

Fix: Increase the fire rate by a lot more. In its current state, it's virtually useless.

2.2 Gun Mod: Auto trigger:

Issue: Has no effect on the fire rate of a weapon.

Fix. Make it increase the fire rate of a weapon. Maybe not so much as the Rod and Spring replacement mod, but using this mod is absolutely useless.

2.3 SMG

Issue: It has an awesome fire rate, but lower damage than the pistol. Why? "Balancing the weapons"? Then the hunting rifle should do more damage than the marksman rifle.

Fix: Increase the damage output of the SMG, maybe reduce the fire rate a bit, and increase the recoil. The drawbacks of this, is the eating up of many bullets, which are already scarce. This would not substitute the pistol, as the pistol, even with a lower damage output, could have more accuracy and eat up less bullets.

2.4 Gun Mod: Magazine Extender

Issue: It only extends the marksman rifle to 7 bullets, which is abnormally low for a marksman rifle standars.

Fix: Make the magazine extender work differently per gun; depending on the gun, the %increase in bullets.

2.5 Hunting Rifle:

Issue: It becomes virtually useless once the marksman rifle is acquired, because of its manual reload and lower damage output.

Fix: Increase the damage of the hunting rifle, and add support for more mods.

2.6 Reload Animation:

Issue: All guns, except for the AK.47, keep their magazines in place when they should drop and be replaced with a new magazine. Funny though, the AK-47 animation is neat. Why not the others?

Fix: Add a decent reload animation to other guns, with magazine replacing.

Issue: Some reload animations are being not timed and executed correctly, specially when reloading while zooming in. This is already being looked at by Devs.

2.7 Explosives and Rocket Launcher

Issue: The have low/miserable output damage to all entities.

Fix: Increase the radius and damage to npc's dramatically, and also to blocks. Right now, they are absolutely useless. In late game, you have to throw 10 dinamites to a zombie to kill it. Too much resource investment for little gain.

2.8 Tactical crossbow

Issue: Theres a compund bow, but no advanced crossbow.

Fix: Add a tactical crossbow with incresed damage and magazine for the late game. This would be brilliant. Something like a repeating semiautomatic crossbow with a magazine of 5 bolts or something. Modern looking aswell.

2.9 Melee weapons

Issue: Limited selection of melee weapons

Fix: Add more choices for melee weapons, for blunt: Moringstar, warhammer, baseball bat (upgraded version of the wooden club), for cutting: swords, katanas (a zombie classic).

 

3. Zombies

3.1 Loot

Issue: Virtually no rewards for killing zombies, except for xp. This means, scavenging and encountering zombies will translate into a loss of resources, as the bullets and resources you prepare to explore and kill zombies are higuer that those you get from exploring.

Fix: Increase the loot chance and quantity for bullets, return the zombie looting like in alpha 16.X, or drastically increase the loot acquired by the extremily rare-dropping-almost-empty-yellow loot bags in alpha 17.1 Exploring needs to be more rewarding.

3.2 Late game zombies

Issue: They take longer to kill. But they are not necesarilly more difficult to kill.

Fix: Increase damage, speed, stealthiness, jump, IA, or something other than life for harder zombies. Make them a challenge, not a long chore.

 

4.Base Building/Traps/Base-related Items

4.1 Electricity: Generator coupler

Issue: If you have a big base, you won't be able to output more than 300 Watts per generator. This means, anything your generator is connected to, for example, traps, have to have a lower total output of 300 watts, which is very limiting if you have a big base. This means you need to have another generator to power up the other traps you couldn't with the first generator, and this also means building an entirely new electric line for those other traps. This means, more complex and time consuming circuitry and trap design.

Fix: Add an electric coupler. I have an idea of how this could work using the existing game mechanics. The coupler adds the output wattage of the generators coupled to it. This could be done by adding an item called "Subgenerator" os something like that, that funtions as a normal generator, but will not conflict with "mothership" of the cricuit with the main generator. Its sole puropose is to extend the wattage of the main generator.

4.2 Electric doors:

Issue: All doors are opened manually. For base building and design, this limits trap design and base automation.

Fix: Let there be electrical doors that can connect to a motion sensor and open or close by detecting the player or zombies via motion sensor, or using a switch to interact with a group of doors. I can picture many situations where this would be useful:

Closing all doors when leaving a base.

Trap zombies in a room.

Lure zombies to a trap.

Open doors for incoming players (such as a drawbridge or gate) when you are far away and the are being pursued by zombies.

There are many situations where this could be helpful.

4.3 Larger doors

Issue: There are mainly 1x2 doors. This makes storing vehicles in garages not practicall at all, and not inmersive. The only viable garage door is horrible, and pretty weak.

Fix: Add different size doors and gates to the building menu. This would also improve base design a lot.

4.4 Lights

Issue: There are basically no light models others than a lightbulb. There were a lot mor eback i alpha 16

Fix: Add more light models in the game.

4.5 Strobe Lights

Wish: Add interactable strobe lights that can change frequency of strobing and light color for, that can be activated via a motion sensor. It would be awesome for your base to be illuminated with strobign red lights on a horde night.

4.6 Traps

Issue: I feel like this game is a little bit limited on the traps side of things. Adding more variety of traps would make it much more fun for trap design.

Fix: Add more traps. With the inclusion of electricity in the game, the scenaris are endless: flamethrowers, spikes, staking lances, guillotines, etc.etc.

4.6 Traps: Pressure plates

Issue: A group of traps can be activated via a pressure plates, but a trap cant be activated via a group of pressure plates.

Fix: Adding the possibility of making a group of pressure plates activate asingle trap (or group of traps) would expand the possibilities of trap and base design.

 

As character limit is near, I will add more on another post in this thread.

[Andresdbr]

(Continuation)

 

5. Mining

5.1 Underground mining

Issue: Its nearly impossible to tell where ores are by probing the surface in dirt patches. Resource-specific rocks were removed, and reosurces are more scarce than ever; mining takes ages now.

Fix: Add a consistent clue or hit to point people in the direction of resource nodes. Return the resource specific rocks aswell please. Increase the resource generation near bedrock.

5.2 Surface Mining

Issue: Surface resource specific rocks were removed. Countless hours spent looking for resources digging through rock and dirt

Fix: Return the resource-specific rocks to the surface. Right now the only viable way of getting resources is mining the surface all resource rocks, without wasting precius time.

5.3 Explosives

Issue: Explosives are not addecuate for mining.

Fix: Add a mining specific explosive that lets you keep the "destroyed" mineral. In real life, mining is done with explosives. This would be also more immersive.

 

6. Exploration

6.1 BEAKERS

Issue: There. Are. No. god damn BEAKERS. At ALL! 3 different maps, everyone with 80+ days, not a single beaker drop.

Fix: Either increase the Pills n Bills in every RGW, and increase the places where you might find a beaker. Such as a lab, hospital, factory, store. Drops from nurses. Lootable from destroyed chemical stations, lottable by wrenching destroyed chemical stations. ANYTHING, PLEASE.

6.2 Military Camps:

Issue: One would think good guns and ammo might be there. But this not true. Military camps are a con. Much more ammo wasted on killing zeds, than the one looted with crappy guns and superb loot perk ability.

Fix: Increase the loot in military camps for guns and ammo.

6.3 Animals

Issue. Animals cant be herded, and hunting them can be a pain in the ass if you dont spawn near a meat factory, given the actual food consumption rates and meat needed to prepare meals.

Fix. Enable animal farming

6.4 Melee:

issue: Melee weapons are terrible. They strike on click, not on weapon aniamtion arc. They are more like a point blank gun.

Fix: Make the melee strikes effective on animation arc.

6.5 Blood

Issue. No bloodstains on surfaces. This is a zombie game. Why wouldn't there be bloodstains on a gory zombie game?

Fix: Add temporary bloodstains on surface near shot enemies. Expand the gore.

 

I'll be updating this whislist as new ideas and time come together. Please tell me what you think below!