Now that You have played Alpha 19, What do you like or dislike?

[Roland]

Working Stiffs crating up primitive tools seems weird but you never know. If you would've asked me in 2019 what commodity was likely to disappear and cause riots at local Costcos due to a global pandemic of a flu virus, I never would have guessed toilet paper. Even having lived through it, I still think it is bizarre that the worldwide groupthink during the first weeks of the pandemic was to make a run on tp. Sure, they eventually were having to ration out things like rice, beans, and flour which does makes sense to me but it proves that life can often be stranger than fiction.

 

So strange fiction shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

[starscream]

1st world problems. think about comfort before food. lol.

[Fanatical_Meat]

Sounds like broken bone or being infected. They don’t significantly debuff and they last a long, long, long time.

Easier to just deal with it until it becomes a problem then do a suicide run to remove them.

They just aren’t fun in their current form.

[BFT2020]

2 hours ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

Sounds like broken bone or being infected. They don’t significantly debuff and they last a long, long, long time.

Easier to just deal with it until it becomes a problem then do a suicide run to remove them.

They just aren’t fun in their current form.

Unless you play a mod where it doesn't remove them when you die  😉

 

Well, if they are not fun to have when you are playing, I think TFP did a good job on them then  😉

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

12 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

Unless you play a mod where it doesn't remove them when you die  😉

 

Well, if they are not fun to have when you are playing, I think TFP did a good job on them then  😉

 

by not fun I mean it barely effects you and the icons are simply irritating.

 

[BFT2020]

3 hours ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

by not fun I mean it barely effects you and the icons are simply irritating.

 

Have you ever had a broken leg while dealing with a wandering horde or ferals?  I do everything I can do to avoid getting these critical injuries as I know as soon as I get one, it is going to bite me in the rear.

[Fanatical_Meat]

3 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

Have you ever had a broken leg while dealing with a wandering horde or ferals?  I do everything I can do to avoid getting these critical injuries as I know as soon as I get one, it is going to bite me in the rear.

Im sure I have. What I am saying is the speed debuff lasts too long and it is typically inconsequential to game play. I’d rather have it do something like lower your speed 80% for a shorter period of time. That would be more fun or you can’t jump for a few minutes or even you can’t move for x seconds and a horde is spawned near your location (Protect your friends!)

As it is now the injury is barely perceptible and it just junks up the screen.

[Roland]

It's razor's edge the devs have to walk. Make the penalties too debilitating and people will rage quit/cheat/afk so they don't have to deal with it. Make it too inconsequential and there is no meaningful impact on gameplay. Make it too long and the casuals and the min/maxers will go bananas. Make it too short and the sim players will complain.

 

The real problem is that the lines between too long and too short and too debilitating and too inconsequential are drawn differently for each person you meet. So the default has to feel a bit unsatisfying for everyone with mods scratching those itches that you have that nobody else cares about.

 

"You have to crawl on your belly for three days real time if you break both legs!" should never be in the default vanilla game even though somebody reading this just had a geekgasm when they got to this last line....

[7daystodierocks]

On 5/28/2021 at 1:25 PM, Roland said:

Working Stiffs crating up primitive tools seems weird but you never know. If you would've asked me in 2019 what commodity was likely to disappear and cause riots at local Costcos due to a global pandemic of a flu virus, I never would have guessed toilet paper. Even having lived through it, I still think it is bizarre that the worldwide groupthink during the first weeks of the pandemic was to make a run on tp. Sure, they eventually were having to ration out things like rice, beans, and flour which does makes sense to me but it proves that life can often be stranger than fiction.

 

So strange fiction shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

people rushed for the toilet paper because if someone coughs around them they all @%$# themselves XD

[meganoth]

16 hours ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

Im sure I have. What I am saying is the speed debuff lasts too long and it is typically inconsequential to game play. I’d rather have it do something like lower your speed 80% for a shorter period of time. That would be more fun or you can’t jump for a few minutes or even you can’t move for x seconds and a horde is spawned near your location (Protect your friends!)

As it is now the injury is barely perceptible and it just junks up the screen.

 

On 6/7/2021 at 10:35 PM, Fanatical_Meat said:

Sounds like broken bone or being infected. They don’t significantly debuff and they last a long, long, long time.

Easier to just deal with it until it becomes a problem then do a suicide run to remove them.

They just aren’t fun in their current form.

 

How does that fit together? They are inconsequentual but you would kill yourself to get rid of them?

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

 

How does that fit together? They are inconsequentual but you would kill yourself to get rid of them?

 

They aren’t fun in their current form.

[meganoth]

35 minutes ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

They aren’t fun in their current form.

 

But  xp loss is?

 

How can injuries be fun? Their function in a game is to push the player to trying to cure them. If the player liked them instead he would just keep the injury going.

 

Edited June 9, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

56 minutes ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

They aren’t fun in their current form.

Broken legs / infections are not fun in real life so it seems immersive 😁

[Fanatical_Meat]

Simplifying what I said.

The experience loss is trivial

The effects of broken bones or infection or concussion last too long and the effects applied are minimal. I’d prefer them to have much shorter but much greater impact.

 

**overall I am good with the concussion effect, duration is a bit long** 

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

How can injuries be fun?

How can getting hit be fun? Talking about HP loss. It isn't Fun, but it's what makes the game. Without it, well, you might kill a few zeds because they're annoying, but.. you get the point.

 

For injuries/debuffs, they need a function, and a gameplay.. if someone complains that a debuff system isn't "fun", they might not have the entire Game Theory under their belt, but they feel like something is wrong about the system.

 

For me, the injury system is a little too random to be Fun. It has all kinds of right elements, but the overall feeling is .. "Well, that happened. Randomly. Now I'm <slightly slow> for half a day and there's nothing I can do about it." It doesn't really change much, there's not much you can do about it before or after, and the things you Can do are passive and a little un-intuitive (keeping full health, passive armor improvements).

 

Not that I can offer a solution to the issues, it would require making decisions about the game that haven't been made, like "what is it trying to be" ...

[BFT2020]

4 minutes ago, theFlu said:

For me, the injury system is a little too random to be Fun. It has all kinds of right elements, but the overall feeling is .. "Well, that happened. Randomly. Now I'm <slightly slow> for half a day and there's nothing I can do about it." It doesn't really change much, there's not much you can do about it before or after, and the things you Can do are passive and a little un-intuitive (keeping full health, passive armor improvements).

 

Not that I can offer a solution to the issues, it would require making decisions about the game that haven't been made, like "what is it trying to be" ...

I seem to recall (but as I am getting older I tend to forget things) that A19 was the introduction of the critical hits / injuries system, but the plan was to fine tune the system for later Alphas so it would be less random and more tied to the type of zombie attacks / events so it would make more sense.

 

I agree that some things were not really intuitive.  I was hording vitamins in a previous playthrough just to use them after I got fatigued, but didn't realized until recently that I can take them proactively to prevent infection and fatigue prior to it occurring (this was me not reading the description very well).  So now I have another use for them if I got extras on hand.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

How can getting hit be fun? Talking about HP loss. It isn't Fun, but it's what makes the game. Without it, well, you might kill a few zeds because they're annoying, but.. you get the point.

 

For injuries/debuffs, they need a function, and a gameplay.. if someone complains that a debuff system isn't "fun", they might not have the entire Game Theory under their belt, but they feel like something is wrong about the system.

 

For me, the injury system is a little too random to be Fun. It has all kinds of right elements, but the overall feeling is .. "Well, that happened. Randomly. Now I'm <slightly slow> for half a day and there's nothing I can do about it." It doesn't really change much, there's not much you can do about it before or after, and the things you Can do are passive and a little un-intuitive (keeping full health, passive armor improvements).

 

Not that I can offer a solution to the issues, it would require making decisions about the game that haven't been made, like "what is it trying to be" ...

 

Passive? If I'm not overlooking anything, all except one injury are incurred by zombie hits and the exception is the broken leg which is incurred by jumping down from great height. Both look like you can actively prevent them from happening.

 

Also except for one injury there are specific (though boring) remedies that either remove the condition or dramatically shorten the time until the injury goes away. If you don't know, just call up the inventory, then klick on the injury on the left side and you can read exactly how that injury can be treated.

 

 

[theFlu]

2 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Passive? If I'm not overlooking anything, all except one injury are incurred by zombie hits and the exception is the broken leg which is incurred by jumping down from great height. Both look like you can actively prevent them from happening.

 

Also except for one injury there are specific (though boring) remedies that either remove the condition or dramatically shorten the time until the injury goes away. If you don't know, just call up the inventory, then klick on the injury on the left side and you can read exactly how that injury can be treated.

"Though boring" is one bit that disagrees with "fun" And I know the remedies and how to find them, but it's good info to repeat on the forum....

 

Sure, you can avoid getting Hit quite actively and that's pretty key for the entirety of the game play. But that game mechanic is already achieved by the standard HP system. The injury system doesn't really add anything interesting to that.

- The same armor that reduces your damage taken reduces your chances of getting injured. No clinical difference. You don't even get to make significant decisions there, since the effect sizes on armor pieces are tiny.

- "Not taking injuries while at full health" just makes medicating early a little more important, but medicating early is a good idea already.

 

- Breaking a leg from falling... yeah, agree there, completely under the player's control. This one I was thinking about after that previous post, with regards to the severity of the injury:

IF every injury was the result of a "proper failure" by the player (not just a vulture spawning around a corner and making a silent swoop on you), the injuries could be made really punishing. The leg breaks for example, if the only way to get a broken leg was to fall a couple stories, I wouldn't mind having to craft a Crutch to equip as a tool and hobble along at 40-60% speed with it, and at 10% speed without, for a game day or two. (Sure, I might moan, but it Was my own darn fault.) But if it happens randomly when the game throws a spidermonkey at my face, it's a different story.

 

The somewhat random combat injuries (concussions, lacerations, fatigue) are all pretty insignificant and easily cured, but only if the RNG has smiled upon you prior - which makes them a non-issue after day.. 3? Not much you can Do, just how lucky you've been all around.

[meganoth]

One detail about combat, the probability you get injuries from getting hit is pretty low but rises fast if you are hit multiple times in a short time frame. So there is a mechanism that punishes you for careless behaviour.

 

Now my opinion is that injuries and remedies can not be made very interesting at all. Just like hunger or temperature, those are mechanisms in every survival game to provide a sink for the items you find and craft. You do stuff, your hunger increases, you eat stuff and the hunger goes away. That is about all that can be done with hunger basically. Not fun or interestingly involving in any way, its just what you do and have to do in a survival game.

 

[theFlu]

48 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Not fun or interestingly involving in any way, its just what you do and have to do in a survival game.

That quite a pessimistic take, and to be honest, I think it defeats itself neatly. There's a whole genre of survival games that revolve around those mechanics, and a group of people seem to enjoy the games. If the mechanics were completely uninteresting, then they would've been cut from the genre; so I'd argue they must have some kind of internal intrigue.

 

And whether we see them as "just a mandatory part of a weird genre" or "interesting game play", since we have them - and I assume "must have them" - then it stands to reason to make them .. significant? As interesting as possible for the very least.

 

As for your example of hunger, TFP have created 4 mostly separate (but somewhat interdependent) solutions for food; buying, farming, hunting, looting. Cooking combines them all, sure, but each of the components is largely self-sufficient if you adjust your game play around it. They're doing their best to make it interesting, and I'd say the current system is pretty good. It mostly suffers from becoming practically obsolete with high tier recipes and a visit to Bob's Boars with no spoilage.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

That quite a pessimistic take, and to be honest, I think it defeats itself neatly. There's a whole genre of survival games that revolve around those mechanics, and a group of people seem to enjoy the games. If the mechanics were completely uninteresting, then they would've been cut from the genre; so I'd argue they must have some kind of internal intrigue.

 

No, they are the necessary ingredients, sort of like the dietary fiber equivalent for a game

 

They fill the game with things to do, they provide objectives, context and dangers, they fill the time, but they are not in any way a fun endeavour alone.

 

Quote

 

And whether we see them as "just a mandatory part of a weird genre" or "interesting game play", since we have them - and I assume "must have them" - then it stands to reason to make them .. significant? As interesting as possible for the very least.

 

Quote

 

As for your example of hunger, TFP have created 4 mostly separate (but somewhat interdependent) solutions for food; buying, farming, hunting, looting. Cooking combines them all, sure, but each of the components is largely self-sufficient if you adjust your game play around it. They're doing their best to make it interesting, and I'd say the current system is pretty good. It mostly suffers from becoming practically obsolete with high tier recipes and a visit to Bob's Boars with no spoilage.

 

But searching for the remedies is a different part of the game. That part, like looting, hunting, buying, is mostly interesting and it works for food the same way it works for remedies. I don't see that the OP has been lamenting that he finds it boring to look for antibiotics in medicine cabinets or a hospital. He talks about the penalty being boring or unfun.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[theFlu]

Just now, meganoth said:

sort of like the dietary fiber equivalent for a game

Lol, talk about coincidences.. you're literally talking to a guy who hasn't eaten fiber for two and a half years.. carnivore ftw

 

2 minutes ago, meganoth said:

But searching for the remedies is a different part of the game.

Yes, sure, exactly... the remedies produce a solution to a challenge, the injuries Are the challenge... except they're not really challenging and the remedies are basically the same, "loot a couple med boxes". Improvements could be made..

 

How would I make some of these more interesting? Well, I'll draft something on the spot.. (poor quality warning)

 

Laceration... doesn't drop your max health, but makes you bleed sporadically on it's own. Quite often even, so you might even need to pull down curtains from your environment to control the bleed. This would "color" your environment a little different, you want to know where the cloth is. Make the suture kit calm it down to what it is now; getting hit will cause bleeds with the high chance of tearing you stitches and putting you back to square one. Duration couple hours without sutures, half an hour with.

 

Bleeds.. let them bleed. Slow loss of life, but at least a couple minutes long without bandages. Gives a nice sense of urgency since you know you'll have to deal with it; note that cloth is essentially everywhere, you'll just need to grab it. This means you'll really want to stitch that laceration.

 

Scrapes... they lower your max health, one of these might be useful .. but I would make this the one that you can instantly heal.. it's not a bleeder, and if you cover the scratches with cloth and antibacterials, you're pretty much golden. Unless you want to go for a "swapping bandages" mechanic, but that seems a little overkill.

 

Concussion.. I'm not even sure what it actually does, I could check, but .. ehh. Make it blur your vision sporadically, dependent on your stamina state.. the lower the stamina, the blacker it goes and the longer it lasts. (You know you're not supposed to strain yourself with head trauma) Making it cause trouble navigating and fighting. The effect goes away temporarily with pain killers, but the debuff doesn't. Getting hit has an increased chance of stunning you whether or not medicated.

  - side note, make driving into a tree on a motorized two-wheeler actually hurt ...

 

Fatigue .. why is this a combat injury? Tighten the screws a lot on the food supply, make being hungry cause increasing fatigue over time.. needing some Real Good foods to slowly recover. Vitamins help, maybe a lot, maybe just temporarily. Yes, you may be starving all the time, but you don't have to make it completely debilitating; being well fed would then be a buff for the early game until the inevitable overabundance kicks in.

 

Sprains .. they're all right as is, could use a little love, but we can't choose to use "the other hand" for the blade for obvious reasons.

 

Broken bones, might copy the idea from earlier.. make it fall-only, require a cast and a friendly NPC to set, and require a crutch to move decently for couple game days. Maybe maybe maybe you can inflict one on the second-to-last hit to land (as in, on any hit that would kill you if doubled in effect).

 

That's not a huge improvement on anything, but might demand your attention and affect your game play in reasonable ways...

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, theFlu said:

Lol, talk about coincidences.. you're literally talking to a guy who hasn't eaten fiber for two and a half years.. carnivore ftw

 

Yes, sure, exactly... the remedies produce a solution to a challenge, the injuries Are the challenge... except they're not really challenging and the remedies are basically the same, "loot a couple med boxes". Improvements could be made..

 

How would I make some of these more interesting? Well, I'll draft something on the spot.. (poor quality warning)

 

Laceration... doesn't drop your max health, but makes you bleed sporadically on it's own. Quite often even, so you might even need to pull down curtains from your environment to control the bleed. This would "color" your environment a little different, you want to know where the cloth is. Make the suture kit calm it down to what it is now; getting hit will cause bleeds with the high chance of tearing you stitches and putting you back to square one. Duration couple hours without sutures, half an hour with.

 

Bleeds.. let them bleed. Slow loss of life, but at least a couple minutes long without bandages. Gives a nice sense of urgency since you know you'll have to deal with it; note that cloth is essentially everywhere, you'll just need to grab it. This means you'll really want to stitch that laceration.

 

Scrapes... they lower your max health, one of these might be useful .. but I would make this the one that you can instantly heal.. it's not a bleeder, and if you cover the scratches with cloth and antibacterials, you're pretty much golden. Unless you want to go for a "swapping bandages" mechanic, but that seems a little overkill.

 

Concussion.. I'm not even sure what it actually does, I could check, but .. ehh. Make it blur your vision sporadically, dependent on your stamina state.. the lower the stamina, the blacker it goes and the longer it lasts. (You know you're not supposed to strain yourself with head trauma) Making it cause trouble navigating and fighting. The effect goes away temporarily with pain killers, but the debuff doesn't. Getting hit has an increased chance of stunning you whether or not medicated.

  - side note, make driving into a tree on a motorized two-wheeler actually hurt ...

 

Fatigue .. why is this a combat injury? Tighten the screws a lot on the food supply, make being hungry cause increasing fatigue over time.. needing some Real Good foods to slowly recover. Vitamins help, maybe a lot, maybe just temporarily. Yes, you may be starving all the time, but you don't have to make it completely debilitating; being well fed would then be a buff for the early game until the inevitable overabundance kicks in.

 

Sprains .. they're all right as is, could use a little love, but we can't choose to use "the other hand" for the blade for obvious reasons.

 

Broken bones, might copy the idea from earlier.. make it fall-only, require a cast and a friendly NPC to set, and require a crutch to move decently for couple game days. Maybe maybe maybe you can inflict one on the second-to-last hit to land (as in, on any hit that would kill you if doubled in effect).

 

That's not a huge improvement on anything, but might demand your attention and affect your game play in reasonable ways...

 

Basically everything here amounts to: heal the injury or you get some annoying hindrance (like the vision blur, I can guarantee you very few people will describe it as fun. I've seen such an effect in a mod).

The hindrances you have chosen may be more realistic, the effects more detailed, and there is no question they would increase variety. But I don't really see an increase in fun (granted that that is in the eye of the beholder). Where do you see a more interesting mechanic, something to entertain and challenge your brain, a non-trivial decision to make?

 

Maybe Fanatical_Meat chimes in, he (as the one who brought this up) might be able to say whether any of this would be more fun for him at least.

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[ShellHead]

It seems like the injuries work well from a “big picture” perspective, they create long term ramifications for overextending in combat or exploration. Might be worth bumping up the escalation element, give each of the injuries more levels so they become more debilitating if you don’t take care of them quickly or play more carefully while you have them? This is how it works anyway so adding some more degrees of intensity could make it more engaging.

i think focusing on making each of the different afflictions more unique would just make it more irritating when you have multiple and make getting back to good health harder, which would actually make people more likely to just take the xp penalty and die to get out of them quicker.

my 2 cents anyway, i like the system currently but i’m down for having worse high end effects too.

[Roland]

Mega is right that healing injuries and eating and drinking is mundane. Sure...changing up how those things work WOULD be more fun....at first. But within a few weeks of playing with the new way they would become mundane too. How to make it fun? Change it again. 

 

Other than changing how these things work to make them feel fresh and new again, there is no way to make them feel interesting long term. No matter what you do, healing, eating & drinking are common repetitive tasks that become mundane and rote pretty quickly. This doesn't mean they are hated tasks or that we should remove damage, hunger, and thirst-- but unless the developers want to change things up every update to keep them fresh, whatever it is they land on (which if it is different than what we have now will sound cool and fun) will eventually become just as mundane to what we have now.

 

Same with scavenging. They could add a minigame to opening containers that would definitely feel fresh and fun compared to the timer we watch right now. Would that minigame still be fun and amazing in 6 months or would we wish we could just skip the minigame and get the crap we actually want out of the cupboard....?