My take on 17: The Kraken is amazing! (the good/bad/concerns)

[Jugginator]

I've always loved this game, and with so many changes happening with the new (beloved) version (and with the hate from some people), I figured it would be worth giving you guys some feedback.

 

I am one of those gamers who enjoys and has fun with the little stuff but gets inevitably bored when the difficulty is not there. Although I enjoyed it very much, A16 was a bore with difficulty -- and I am glad that that's changed. What I didn't like in 16, in short, was the AI was broken to the point where I had to overthink too much on how to build a base that would actually GIVE a challenge of some sort (or even just how to make it slightly more dangerous), food/water stockpiled to unreasonable amounts due to my character not being hungry for days, and the game essentially ended at day 7-14. No to drone on, let's carry to 17. Note that I will not be including bugs or things that are caused by bugs, since they will indubitably be fixed soon anyway -- this is pure feedback on the game alone.

 

 

 

The survival aspect has indeed come back and I love it. My only playthrough so far is based with a friend which we played together trying to make things interesting in A16.

 

Things were a bit harder in A15, and when 16 hit (aside from dying due to being silly/a bug/etc), zombies weren't a threat at all. A17, my oh my has that changed for the better. The AI is amazing, fantastic work on that! The game is SCARY again -- hell I actually got jump scared a couple of times in my first playthrough. The whole crafting/item system is welcomed; gone are the days spam-crafting / going through dozens of skill levels to be able to craft better items, I am also glad that repairing tools is now worth it over scrapping every time and making a new one -- it just makes sense and knocks away one more previously tedious task.

 

Food and water are now a major concern, and I love it. Go out farming nodes/trees/killing zombies, better replenish after. This is the first time I've ever said to my friend "♥♥♥♥, we better head back to our shack and eat/drink/rest up"; at the beginning of day7, my friend responding to a similar statement, "Hey we don't have any food left". So, I focused on last-minute gathering of iron arrowheads from the trader's forge we've been using, and she went out and tried to find some food so we can get stamina and HP back (unfortunately, only found some eggs, so the struggle is there). Survival, at last.

 

Cotton and plants are ACTUALLY a needed thing now! Bandages, previously, were useless. Yes, the stop bleed out thing was needed, but usually, you're loaded on first aid bandages/kits after a couple of days. These new awesome bandages make sense -- they give you a bit of max HP back and heal you a tad! Plus, red tea now (and for those of you raging about stamina loss) give you a buffer against max stamina loss. Coffee, thank god, doesn't hurt you now and gives you more stamina too.

 

I could ramble on, but I think I made it clear that I like the survival difficulty being ramped significantly.

 

POI/general raiding has become scary, nerve wreaking, and overall more fun! Major props to the people who designed these POIs, they are fantastic! The detail they went into them was shocking. The little things, too, aside from the major design, like barricaded corners with dead bodies, torn up carpet on stairs... I could go on but, again, this would turn into a book -- A+++ on the environment. I'll share the story in the "Share your survival" thread, but one large house took about 350 arrows, 2 deaths from my friend and 1 from me, an entire in-game day and a feeling of accomplishment (and a broken leg, 10HP, sick) on the hike back to the shack. Moving on...

 

Skills. 100% With you there, the game feels like an RPG finally! Much love to all of it, especially the one that gives a buff to nearby allies -- very awesome indeed -- I would like some clarifications on some of the skills, though. Such as Charging Bull -- what does it do? It states "When you charge into enemies... and +entity damage"... what's entity damage? When I run into a zombie? Am I a wreaking ball?

 

Trader quests are cool, but I would like clarification on what the "area" is. I, on my first and only one, Didn't find any zombies, so I wandered into the nearest house -- killed the zombies in there -- and the quest didn't complete... so I went to the next house and it was out of range, failing the quest. Little ring display or something would help out.

 

I love all of the additional recipes, schematics... no complaints there. Sham chowder... ew lmao. The particular schematics that require you to use it at a workbench, I am not even sure if that's how it works, I guess it does. May need clarification. Speaking of which -- and I figured it out since I've been a long time player -- there may need to be some "helper" clarifications in the skill trees for newer players. It took me a minute to figure out the difference between Int/Perception etc. and the skills contained in them.

 

I like the new combat styles, the difficulty in killing early on, the new melee seems nice.

Also, I love the fact that you cant straight-away get everything by day 1 and 2. I used to have to TRY to make things hard by avoiding making forges early, avoiding looting, only building one forge, etc. I see people hating on "the grind to forge" and all of that but.. it makes the game more rewarding. Instead of "omg I gotta grind such and such for a forge and tools now", it's adapt, improvise, survive. I hunted a forge in a trader, and am using it to make iron arrowheads and forged iron, and just built a tiny shack to rest up and store loot in. I found a stone-foundation 2 story house that I improvised into a, hopefully, survivable 7-day horde base for the first one. It's not too grindy, and not too easy. It's perfect. I am so thankful for the survival hardness coming back, and I hope it continues; please don't revert back to A16 easy mode, the "have forges, steel tools, workbenches, concrete base by day 7 and 14" absolutely killed my desire to play much, besides when I have ideas to make the game hard by forcing to play differently. If you want easy-mode, play differently/use cheats/mod the config files.

 

I really could go on, but I don't want to make it too long. Love it all, the game looks great, zombie skins are awesome, fantastic work!

 

Concerns are just on optimization (and I know with a new build it needs to be worked on and it will be). This is more of a reminder to take a look at getting it to work smoothly on lower-end systems. I ran between 40-60 FPS in 16, and I have to have everything low and in the smallest, windowed resolution. I do notice textures don't have much to do with that, as I can run on a small resolution with full-sized textures, but I noticed the light is what does it. Not sure if it'll help, but maybe an option to reduce shaders/lighting will help. Resolution is the main killer in 17 -- if I up the resolution my frames go to ♥♥♥♥ quickly lol. The game doesn't use much past half of my resources, maybe up to 60-65% total at most. But, I am hopeful some optimization will come.

 

Thank you for the hard work and the changed to make the game frightful again guys, and glad to be a part of it.

 

Ah forgot to mention the death toll. I do agree with and like a punishment for death, but I do feel as if there should be something we can do to lower the 1 hour cooldown on that. Such as resting/eating/etc. i'd say reducing a key skill for the duration is a bit much, but I don't see any other way to go about it, so I'm fine with it.