Configurable sleeper respawns + export / import character

[hairlessOrphan]

Every player eventually gets to the point where they've "beaten" a map in their own minds - confident horde base, self-sufficient upkeep, T5+6 gear. Then the game often peters out in the most dissatisfying way, "not with a bang, but with a whimper." Not with a win, but with boredom. And boredom is the last impression we're left with, and that sucks.

 

This always leaves me imagining a world where I could clear all the POI's to "reclaim" the map and then move on to a new map. It's a clear, achievable endgame goal (clear the map!) that extends indefinitely (move to new map!). NitroGen makes generating a variety of maps and experiences so easy, but the base game doesn't really support this pseudo game mode. The two hurdles:
1. POI's never stay cleared. Which means we have to house-rules it by setting up some marker on a POI to pretend it's cleared (for ex: boarding up all the doors and windows), and there's no feedback of accomplishment from the game

2. Starting a new map is a fresh slog through the terrible early levels - especially with First Night Dire Wolves arbitrarily ending hardcore games (hardcore being enforced again by house rules. Another game mode I'd love to see)

 

This endgame loop would be enabled by:
1. Configurable sleeper respawns (and POI resets!). Exactly the way loot respawns are configurable. If we can disable both entirely, we can actually progress through a map.

2. Configurable exports of characters. Specifically, choosing whether we import / export:

- levels / perks

- current gear / inventory

- playtime / stats (deaths / days survived)

I don't have a good, in-game fictional reason why a character would lose gear moving from map to map, but from a playing-the-game standpoint I'd want to keep the levels but lose the gear. Hence the inventory options. The stats option is so we can track how long it takes us to clear a map and if we died our way through it.

[hairlessOrphan]

To clarify, I personally think these are the two additions needed that:

1. make this game mode a real actual thing

2. seem technically viable with relatively low effort

- POI's already have a timer of five days, so that should be expandable. Loot timers can already be disabled. It seems possible that both timers run through similar logic

- the player .ttp file exists. It seems possible to leverage that format and logic to create partial exports

 

If it's popular enough after these, then there are ways to build on this game mode. Configurable wandering horde size and frequency (to make up for lack of zombies from cleared POI's), actual in-game support for "moving" to a new map (by driving to an airport or something, I don't know), etc... Some of these ideas may be more or less feasible, but none of them are necessary to enable this game mode, and none of them worth exploring IMO until the game mode is actually validated. So OP is my "seems like low-effort" suggestion for experimenting with this.