Backpacks, annoyances, tweakable maps, super zombies, experience

[jazzadellic]

I'm enjoying the game, and I think it has much potential. There are numerous annoying things that I have encountered that I think could be easily added to the game, and would be appreciated by everyone. I will probably forget a few, but here are some that stand out: 1. We need a way to craft a bigger backpack. It's nice that there is plenty of loot to be found, but having to run back to base every 5 minutes because your inventory is full is very annoying. Letting us upgrade our backpack a few times would be great. This is something everyone will appreciate. 2. When aiming a ranged weapon and firing a shot, the game FORCES you to aim again. This is very annoying if you only need to take 1 shot, or take 1 shot and switch to a melee weapon now because the enemy you shot is now slapping your face. I do kind of like the fact that the weapon stays in aimed position without having to hold the mouse button down (although you could add the option to let people hold to aim). But there is no reason why when you reload this couldn't reset. 3. When fighting dogs in grassy areas, or any area that has grass for that matter, you end up hitting the grass not the dog anywhere from 50% to 100% of the time. Since your natural instinct is to run backwards while swinging, all you end up doing is running backwards into more grass....and thus get sometimes 100% failure to connect. Meanwhile...the dog has no problem tagging you 1 hit per second, grass or no grass. This inevitably ends up getting you killed and very annoyed at what seems like a slightly broken game mechanic. The dogs need to be made taller or grass shorter, or if perhaps the dog entity could override grass and your swing could pass through the grass and hit the dog that might also work. This problem exists for the crawlers as well but since they are so slow it's not a terrible problem. Letting crossbow bolts pass through grass would also be nice for sniping dogs and crawlers. 4. Grilled venison, charred venison, boiled venison all give the same exact effect. But boiled venison has the additional cost of a bottle of water. Why not let the boiled venison give a positive hydration effect since it costs a bottle of water? The benefits of boiled venison would need to be GREATER than the benefits of say charred venison and a bottle of water consumed separately. Otherwise, what's the point? At the moment, there is no point to making boiled venison. So it is a craftable item that nobody (who thinks) would ever craft. Items like that need to be rebalanced or removed, period. 5. Randomly generated maps are at first....very impressive. Your like "wow! this was randomly generated??" But then you quickly realize that running around exploring is ...completely and utterly pointless. I spent a couple hours running around and didn't find anything but more randomly generated map. The only two positive things I could think of that come from randomly generated maps is A) A large resource filled map that players could have plenty of room to build their bases. B) The devs can be lazy and not have to spend time making really nice maps that are designed well and offer diverse, interesting, and balanced game play. Now when you think of my reason A, it's actually completely wrong, because nobody would build their base anywhere far away from the main city where all the good loot drops. And when you analyze reason B, well that's actually a negative for the players. So both A & B, are actually negatives. I think randomly generated maps work great for Minecraft, because MC is all about gather and build, and nothing else really. But for this game, it's actually a negative since most of the map is EMPTY other than the terrain, and we really want to experience the zombie apocalypse and have cool things, like deserted towns, cities, airports, skyscrapers, racetracks, canyons, waterfalls, underground cave systems, an amusement park, etc....We want to discover more on the map other than small rocks, trees, grass and trash. I've switched from my SP random map game to Navezgane SP game and already I'm enjoying it more, because the roads actually go somewhere! The map actually feels realistic and adds to the immersion. Possible Solutions: Have a map editor, which would generate a random map for you initially, just to get the hard work out of the way of making the main landmass etc...But then let people easily edit the maps and add in more stuff to make the maps actually FUN. I.e. more cities and villages and easter eggs to be found. Roads that actually go somewhere.....Heck you could make a racetrack for the cars that we will eventually be driving. This would be great for MP servers because every server admin could strive to have the "coolest" custom tweaked map. The randomly generated map feature would still be very useful. But you could add various parameters and such that could be tweaked before it is generated, within the map editor. So like you could tell the generator to make a map with mostly desert biome and at least 3 major cities....Or generate a map with large underground cave systems! (ok I know this is a stretch, but think how cool it would be!). People could then upload their awesome customized maps up to Steam workshop!!!! So MP and SP would both benefit from this immensely, IMO. Or maybe you could make the map generator even better and more likely to generate more farms, villages, cities, etc...What are those places you find munition boxes? Army recon camp or something? I haven't even seen one yet in my game after like 3 hours of just running around the map, just more grass, trees and wasteland. 6. Ok here is just a random idea, but it sounds cool to me! How about you can actually gain some xp from killing zombies, and then spend that exp on raising up certain things like mining speed, wood chopping speed, food and hydration takes longer to go to zero, better durability on your crafted items (i.e. 10% bonus to durability of your crafted items, maybe you purchase 5% at a time and max out at 50%). Or maybe you could buy unlocks like 1000 xp you can unlock a unique clothing item like a Harley Davidson leather jacket or something...that would be of course just cosmetic but you know people like stuff like that. In other words, something very simplistic could be added to make killing zombies actually rewarding, without necessarily having to rewrite the whole game engine. 7. Have more zombie special powers like left 4 dead. You already have the police zombie that shoots puke and charges and explodes! He's great, put more special power zombies in game please. Killing the same boring zombies over and over gets tedious. Having interesting and challenging zombies with unique abilities makes it more fun and also with some type of reward system as mentioned above, zombie hunting will become an integral part of the game, instead of a nuisance you have to put up with while building your uber fort.

[AutoDMC]

I'd personally be very, very careful with XP perks. In every game I've played with perks (I'm thinking specifically of Fallout 3/New Vegas and Saints Row), I quickly get to the point where survival is no longer difficult and therefore no longer fun. When I'm able to tank 50 bullets and run across the map in an hour, I've (personally) found it to be less fun. Sure, the first time you walk into a fight shouting "I AM YOUR GOD NOW, BOW TO ME" it's fun, but once the challenge is gone, it's gone. At this time, in theory, the game is about a hostile world growing ever more hostile daily, while your abilities are limited to the tools you can craft. You can craft better tools to fight against the world, but at the end of the day you still have to eat and drink. I enjoyed the "Hardcore" mode in New Vegas, because not only did it give a reason to hunt instead of just eat snack cakes but because it added tension; I had to decide how much food to carry during play sessions, and had to decide when to use health kits and when to use food... ...until I got the perks that massively increased my carrying capacity, and the infinite tap of clean water, and the repair bay that could repair anything infinitely, and the infinite tokens for canned goods... ...hardcore mode went from a fun challenge to a chore, because it was no longer a core mechanic but instead just some added busy work to play the game. [B]TL;DR[/B] I like the idea of an XP system that can buy perks, and I know it's coming because it's a stretch goal. I'd just like to make sure the devs keep it balanced. Spending a ton of XP in order to get a 15-20% smell radius bonus would be OK. It's enough to be useful while never making you the god of the game. But it'll be way too easy to want to double food duration... just be aware that survival crafting games have to be balanced to keep the survival bit from feeling like a chore, and the only way to do that is to keep the game's focus around those little status bars.

[Aedaric]

Easy solution--if you die, your XP perks disappear. = )

[legolas141]

Most of your ideas/observations are already being worked on, or are in the development goals. with regards to random maps, and grass interference - this is just the first version of random gen, it is by far not a finished product yet. Grass is an issue that has been addressed in many posts and is something that is being worked on. backpacks are an unkown at this point, likely to not happen as you already have sufficient, (some would say too much) inventory space. the goal is not to loot the entire game world on the first run through, but to scavenge stuff over several trips. Zombies are far from being finished, changes to movement, and ai, just to mention two items, are already in the works. I am sure that there will be sigificant changes to the zombies so that they are all different. whether new zeds with abilities will come is another question. The game is designed to cooperate with the modding community so once it is finished, (as in no longer in alpha or beta) then player made maps will more than likely be a thing. There are plans for a very in depth skill and experience system, again, this will be further into the development cycle. My point is, a few simple searches would have already revealed most of these topics to already be covered. that is not to say that I don't agree with a lot of what you are suggesting/asking for. I am just suggesting you search before you post. One post for one topic is plenty, while 20+ threads regarding the same issue (grass interference, random map POIs, zombie types to name a few) only creates clutter and confusion. I do however, applaud you for not using the "I WANT IT NOW!!!!!" type of post that has been far too common lately.

[Robert Skywalker]

Definitely great ideas. The dogs... OMG the dogs... The stupid grass and the dogs and crawlers. We need to be able to hit through the grass ans hit them. What kind of club stops at grass? The map needs a LOT of work, but this is the very first introduction of random maps. We need more cities to be randomly generated. I despise the one I generated in , its basically Gravetown, my least favorite area of the map. I do not like the burnt forests at all. They're ugly, lack wood, and most buildings are wrecked, so they contain less loot. I haven't found any other POIs except for the city I generated in yet.

[Roland]

[QUOTE=Robert Skywalker;123400] The stupid grass .....[/QUOTE] Lets be nicer to the grass because it goes both ways. Grass has saved my life on more than one occasion. It is not only the zombies that benefit from the Ultimate Shield of Protection +5. Sometimes we do too....

[AutoDMC]

To be fair to the grass... having lived out in the sticks and actually had to whack at grass that's as tall as me... you try swinging a baseball bat covered in spikes in the middle of the grass. The problem is that the grass graphics are so thin you'd expect to be able to just breeze through it. But I imagine in my head that 5 foot tall thick prairie grass, and my inability to hit a zed through it makes much more sense.