Elements for Late Game

[user12345]

Hi guys,

first of all - great game! Love to play it since A16 and was very happy to see A17+ bringing more content. Now that A19 is around the corner I'm very excited to play the game again and explore the new content you've created for us. However, since I stopped playing A18 after spending a few hundred hours till now, I realized what I was missing to continue playing the game... content. So I want to share with you why I think this happened to me.

 

Loot is very easy to get. Once you know the POI you are so much tempted to nerdpole up there. I would like to see the game kick gamer's *** if they try to do so by having some surprises ready. E.g. what about some keycards distributed in the POI (or even in another?) that are required to access the main loot of the POI?

 

World size is quiet small - even with 8x8k. Once you got a motorcycle it's easy to explore the whole world and afterwards you loose the ability to discover new interesting areas/cities. I'm not sure whether an endless world like in Minecraft would help any and most likely be a killer for server performance. However, I could image that you could make the world "feel" much larger if you increase the difficulty to enter areas that are further away from the center of the map. Adding elements such as radiation dust that requires the player to first gain special equipment or increasing the amount/strength/aggressiveness of zombies would avoid players to explore most of the map in the first week. It would also somewhat force players on a MP server to stay mostly in the center of the map.

 

Electricity is very limited in the way it can be used and is an absolute performance killer (at least on my machine). Especially in end game with 64 zomibies I want to make use of automated turrets and neat trigger plate set-ups that keep my back secured while fighting the horde. However, the wiring is limited to producer -> switch -> consumer. There's no way to negate a trigger signal or to combine multiple producer-switch-consumer circuits. Playing with electricity in end game is very interesting but somewhat limited by its performance. Trigger plates tear down the FPS once a zombie steps on them and it becomes even worse if I'm using solar panels. So I typically avoid these 2 components in all my builds. Having more options to automate your base (maybe even in crafting/collecting common resources) + some performance enhancements in this area would help.

 

The world feels flat/static in the end. Base has been set-up, ammo stock is ready for 3+ hordes and tier 5-6 weapons/tools on toolbelt. Then the remaining question is what to do with these 6 days till the next horde? Grinding resources? Games such as Diablo try to keep players in the late game with legendary item sets. Conan Exiles has thralls that allow you to some extend to populate your base so you don't feel you're just playing with your computer. Maybe some elements such as NPCs that you could rescue and bring to your base to support you in surviving would make the end game more dynamic.