More difficult gameplay

[Hinado]

I really like the direction the game is going. The last few patches increased overall difficulty step by step. Foremost the decrease in the amount of loot, rarer POIs (random gen) and the big hordes on day 7. Nevertheless I have some ideas I'd like to share, which should make crafting of certain item types a little harder. Additionally I have some ideas for changes on existing zombies and one new special zombie type which shouldn't collide with stuff like mocap but should increase intensity of zombie attacks. Loot/Crafting - Abundance of Glass Jars reduced by ~30% (there are way to many since they are reusable) - Abundance of Beaker reduced by ~25% (to common for one of our only "high end" items, should need to be crafted) - Abundance of Repair Tool reduced by ~50% (I always find a lot of them, I think up until now I only crafted 1 or 2) - Abundance of Home Maintenance I book increased by ~20% - Crushed Sand is produced with 0.5 Sand instead of 0.25 (Glass Jars are reusable so they should be harder to make) - Glass Jar is forged with 1 Crushed Sand instead with 0.8 (See above) - Glass Pane is forged with 4 Crushed Sand instead with 2 - Windows additionally need 1 Glass Pane (Windows without glass?) - Lump of Clay is produced with 0.25 clay instead of 0.111 (right now you don't need much but get a ton in no time) - Iron Ingot is scrapped to 12 Scrap Iron instead of 6 (Forging without a mine gets harder, right now its value feels to high) - Added (about as rare as Beaker now) Beaker recipe book (7 Glass Panes, would further increase sand and pane value) Material value in other recipes would need to be adjusted accordingly. For example you would need more scrap iron to forge Iron Ingots, Small Iron Pipes are scrapped to 1 Scrap Iron instead of 3 and so forth. Zombie Types Spider Zombie - Add: Movement speed increased by ~20% (day+night) Right now he often doesn't stand out to much and jumping is easily countered by building an overhang. Decayed Cheerleader - Add: Damage of other zombies in a 5 block radius is increased by 5% (stacks with up to 5 Cheerleaders) Would become a special zombie and might cause some dangerous situations if there are multiple which aren't taken care of. Plagued Nurse - Add: Zombies in a 5 block radius regenerate Health slowly (does not stack) Would also become a special zombie. Especially strong with hordes when it is hard to focus fire. Zombies that were already hit a while ago could take 1 shot more. An alternative idea would be a heal ability for single zombies but that would be way harder to implement. New: Spider Zombie (Rename other one?) - Always walks on all fours - Can walk on all surfaces (even on the ceiling, that means he can climb all sorts of towers) - ~30% decreased movement speed when moving vertically or on ceiling (day+night) Would create some interesting situations, especially when you enter a building and 1-3 of them hang at the ceiling or you come back to your base and some of them were able to make their way into it. Would also make the "stand on top of a wall with an overhang and shoot down" strategy more interesting.

[Zvex]

[QUOTE=Hinado;125737] Plagued Nurse - Add: Zombies in a 5 block radius regenerate Health slowly (does not stack) Would also become a special zombie. Especially strong with hordes when it is hard to focus fire. Zombies that were already hit a while ago could take 1 shot more. An alternative idea would be a heal ability for single zombies but that would be way harder to implement. [/QUOTE] We can separate the zombie killing methods into 2 categories: 1. Fast killing, like shotgun 2. Slow killing, like multilayered traps Such zombie would turn off the (2) but will have no effect on (1). I personally like to have sparse trap zones randomly around my base, so it make me feel that any horde will likely lose its "durability" by the time it reaches my base. Also I love to watch how many and on which layer do zombie die, its like a lottery: will horde get into trap zone or get lucky, and then I will perhaps add some additional traps. Such a nurse will make it no challenge at all when you kill zombies with pistol headshots or the shotgun. It just turn off the multilayered traps, that are really hard to make and should obviously make a strong impact on any horde that comes in. And the last thing: zombies are rotting creatures that constantly lose their durability ... zombie is a rotting dead creature and if it would regenerate its healtch, it obviously should turn into normal people looking dumb creatures. What I wanted to say is that zombie regeneration is fully unrealistic process - the body of a zombie can only degenerate, since it is dead.

[ricslady99]

We need clay to make brick.

[Peter34]

[QUOTE=ricslady99;125896]We need clay to make brick.[/QUOTE] Why bother making Brick when it can't be upgraded?

[Robert Skywalker]

Not on board with anything. I've traveled 20 km and looted everything and still yet to find a beaker. A lot of the recipes are balanced already, and you just want to decrease them, to make them UP? Now for the zombies. Making them stronger could definetly be good, but currently the spawn rates are out the roof! In the future they do plan to changes zombies anyway.

[Grotto19]

[QUOTE=Peter34;125960]Why bother making Brick when it can't be upgraded?[/QUOTE] It is about 4-5 times faster to get what you need to make decayed brick or concrete than to get what you need for upgraded cobblestone. I play solo so getting my first outpost set up 4-5 times faster is important. I find brick to be durable enough, occasionally one block or two gets broken but that’s not a big deal. Sure reinforced cobblestone is amazing but I always want to start farming by day 4 or 5, and playing solo I wouldn’t even be close to having enough materials if I was waiting on rebar and cobblestone. So for me Brick has a very useful purpose, I reserve upgraded cobblestone for a latter permanent fortress.

[Ariel]

I like your ideas, the game is too easy sometimes, even with the hardest settings.

[Grotto19]

Making things harder to get may not always be the answer. For example we could make food and water drain much faster (forcing you to spend more time hunting for them to survive) and also make everything cost 4 times as much to make (making acquiring tools and building your base take longer). But does that really accomplish anything? Have you actually made the game harder, or simply made it more tedious? Would you not just end up in the same completely safe place in the end, just having it take 20 days instead of 5? And would those extra days feel more fun or just feel like pointless extra work? The second part of your post speaks to the one of the two real issues. The challenge or threat. For a game to be truly enjoyable people must feel a threat of loss or failure. Most people are not comfortable or happy with a high probability of loss or failure but there must be a small chance for them to feel engaged. If you know that you cannot possibly die, or that you will lose virtually nothing, then there is little point to face the challenge at all, for it is not a challenge and in the long run not engaging. Adjustments to the zombies are needed to make them feel like a challenge. Most of your suggestions were directly tied to the nature of the zombie, and I love that, fantastic idea. But they were also mostly horde oriented (not very applicable or effective for smaller spawns). I would recommend using adjustments like yours but modified to be equally challenging regardless of the number of zombies present. So not 5% per nurse but rather a large flat bonus if a nurse is within a certain radius for example. The other issue is progression which I will put in my next reply.

[Grotto19]

Progression is another main issue. You reach a point no matter how rare resources are or how expensive to manufacture that you have everything you need. It does not really matter if it is day 5 or day 20 when this happens but at some point you look at the clock in the upper left hand corner and say oh look it is 8AM what do I need to do today, and the answer comes back…Nothing. When you have a safe base, huge stacks of supplies, and you realize I literally don’t need to do anything. I could go out and kill more zombies, adding to my 50 repair kits and giant brass pile, or I could go hunting and add to my massive pile of grilled meat and goldenrod tea, I could raid the city and add to my collection of guns and ammo, I could make my self-sufficient base even bigger, but I don’t need to do any of those things for days and it wouldn’t matter, and worse it won’t do anything to change my situation from what it is now. This is where the game feels like it is over, there is nothing left I need to do, nor anything that will improve my position, I am already set. Progression means I must always have something more to aspire to. Be it character levels (a reason to go out and kill more zombies for character improvement), or a growing threat (the zombies keep getting nastier so I need to keep building to survive it), or a storyline which requires increasing levels of competence and equipment to progress through. Each of these type of elements provides an important function, giving you something to reach for. A reason to leave your cobblestone fortress each morning. Knowing that you are still getting stronger or better, and knowing that you still have a challenge to overcome. What keeps us going is when both of those elements of progression are present. If the pimps manage to keep those two elements thriving, they can keep us engaged and playing forever. But currently (and I know lots more is coming so this is not a rant or complaint) people are running into that wall where there is no further “getting better” just a further stockpiling of stuff you already have, and nothing challenging left to overcome. This is where people become disengaged from any game, and it should be the primary goal of designers to push this point away as far as possible without making the game tedious

[LeastConcern]

Listen to this guy^ He knows what he's talking about! ;-)

[Zvex]

I totally agree about progressing ... maybe we should take more from tower defense concept? For example, with each day zombies become more and more aggressive infinitely until the player dies :) . Would be interesting as each player generates zombies, so if there is a long living player nearby, he would take with him a hordes of nightmare creatures with him, like a curse, until you die :D . It would be a real survivng challenge ... but yes, then you need some sort of nightmare creatures again, creatures that will blow any of your defences. But the fact that you will die sooner or later is not good ... but maybe another things of tower defence concept should be considered. I think that this part of a game is the weakest: tower defence. We need more tower defence, it means we need more advanced zombies (4-legged spider zombies, for example, or long-jumping dogs that are immune to falling damage) and we need more advanced traps like a wall with electricity, motion detectors with flamethrowers and so on.