Kajin

Honestly, I'd quite like the idea of extending crop cycles to maybe half realistic times. Make it so the player has to have a lot more land if they want to be completely self sufficient on crops alone. That way you'd have to rely on other methods of food gathering in order to survive.

Not a bad idea. Not every fruit or vegetable on the plant can be harvested at once. They all ripen at different times, so you won't necessarily be picking everything worth eating at once. Maybe make it so that harvesting a plant gets you only a portion of what you normally get but it reverts back to the mature growth stage after harvest once or twice before finally becoming exhausted of all edible materials.

Project Zomboid: Ultimate Bass Fishing Edition!

Yeah, I vote for the "injuries only when doing work impaired" option. Random chance of injury while doing things that are practically mandatory does not for good game design make. Random injuries while doing things in hazardous but for the most part avoidable conditions is a better option. Should I finish building the wall? It's raining so I could slip and have an accident, but those zombies won't keep themselves out.

Depending on how long it takes trees to grow in the game (I've never set out to see how long it takes, so I wouldn't know) it might make for a good idea to be able to plant saplings of your own choosing. Having a bunch of fruit and nut trees would be awesome.

Sure there is. It's called "Fighting Other Survivors". It's only a feature in multiplayer at the moment, but once NPCs finally get added you'll be using guns for fighting other people more often than you would the zombies.

I'd be against the addition of silencers. Mostly because they don't work in real life like they do in the movies. Real life silencers don't do hardly anything to reduce noise. I'd love to have bows and arrows, though. That would be awesome.

An animal inside a trap, if it isn't dead, will make a helluva lot of racket. Could attract undead, maybe? Or other predator animals looking for helpless quarry? Imagine bagging a deer but the noise and blood attracted a bear.

I like the idea of damaged jar lids having less preservation time. Makes them still viable as a resource without absolutely destroying the ability to preserve goods by way of canning as the game drags on through time.

Generally speaking you'll have a higher chance of dying if the bees are africanized and that's only because they're really persistent. Regular bees will leave you alone once you stop bothering them and leave. Just take a sewing kit, a hat, some heavy clothing and some of that wire window screening and you'll be able to make yourself a functional bee suit that can protect you from getting stung well enough. Not entirely, maybe, but not anywhere near enough to kill you.

Can already see it now..........survived years into the zombie apocalypse only to be taken out by an angry swarm of bees because you ran out of lids. Unless you're allergic to bees getting stung isn't deadly, just uncomfortable. And besides, if you're gonna be keeping bees you'd be stupid to not invest in a smoke pot to calm the bees down and heavy clothing to prevent being stung.

You can get wax from bee hives to use to seal off cans. If that doesn't suit you, though, you can dry the fruits and vegetables and use the damaged lids to store them instead of pressure cooked foods. The seal would still be strong enough to keep out water if not bacteria and that won't matter because the bacteria won't be able to survive on the dried food to make it go bad. Heck, you could store the dried food without jarring it so long as it keeps dry.

Not sure I like the idea of needing both vinegar AND sugar to preserve canned goods. Especially not if you're cooking it, which should require neither. Not if you're jarring it, anyways. The cooking destroys all bacteria and the jar lid, if done right, will be pressure sealed to prevent bacteria from being reintroduced into the food. Adding sugar or vinegar would help with preservation, but it should by no means be necessary. Maybe make it so that food preserved without the addition of sugar or vinegar makes the food less nutritious and last half as long as a way to balance it out should you lack the resources? Vinegar is hard to come by and difficult to make and sugar will be impossible to get without the addition of crops like sugar beets and sugarcane or beekeeping.

Hated school up until college. Then I actually started liking it.

I imagine it could be more lenient in sandbox. But that would take fun out of the game so I'd avoid it, personally.

I know I've said this a thousand times, but I think it'd be a better all around feature if the NPCs you started with (in the main Survival mode, at least) had some kind of limiting handicap. Like, say, the NPC broke their leg and the best they can do is hobble around the base and heal while you expend vital effort and resources keeping them alive. But it's worth it in the end because their leg eventually heals and you have a loyal and competent ally from then on out. Or they get eaten by zombies and you've gained nothing for all the effort. Or you get eaten trying to get them out. That would be a brutally fun way to play. Just check the "Start in a Group" listing and it gives you a group with some kind of dysfunction or another that you have to work around and change your method of play to compensate for it. Interesting stuff like that.

I'm saying offset the advantage. Starting in a group right from the word go gives the player an advantage a solo starting player wouldn't have. The solo player would still have to go out and find other survivors and build up enough trust to work together as a cohesive unit. This takes time and effort and you don't get to pick and choose who you group with anywhere near as easily if you're literally creating the group you want from scratch. You have to work with the resources you get and they may not be optimal. Having starting group members come with disadvantages and drawbacks acts as a counterbalance to even gameplay out so that no one option becomes the default method of play. Or what would the point be otherwise? Why start with nothing when you can start with everything? Why not check off every tick on that list and become the Undisputed God King of Stats and Traits™? Why not just go to sandbox and make the easiest, most banal game in existence because you dislike the idea of having any disadvantage at all? It's all about balance. Making sure that everything is even. Being tough, but fair. If one option is clearly the better option, then everyone will flock to it. Starting with a group is clearly the better option over going solo and finding a group later. So you break someone's leg or you make them an asshole nobody can get along with. It's something that can be overcome and compensated for, so it's still a viable option, but no more so than it would be if you just went solo.

Just because an AI character isn't as smart or diverse of ability as a human character would be, doesn't make it useless. They can still hunt. Still fish. Still farm. Still make trips from the base to the town to loot supplies. Still fight and defend. Still be helpful. Starting with an AI character would vastly increase your odds unless, as I said before, the AI is utter shit to begin with. Creating with a disadvantage to counter that advantage is the only reasonable way to balance things out and make the game fair. I have to take a negative trait to balance out any positive traits I take. Why shouldn't that be the same for the positive trait of an NPC companion?

Yes, I did. Have a couple friends that play it. We had more supplies than we knew what to do with. After a few days of solo scavenging, we met up at our chosen base with enough tools and supplies to last until we could setup the farm and rain barrels. After that we were capable of self sufficiency forever, just about. Had more food than we even needed. Most of the food rotted because we couldn't eat it fast enough and we never ran out of fresh water. And this was before the addition of trapping and fishing. Ended up quitting the game and going back to singleplayer because we had everything we needed and it got boring. You're asking for something that's completely and totally game breaking. There has to be a way to balance out it. Introducing various hindrances and hangups to balance things out is something that needs to be done, or else you shouldn't be able to start with people at all. It's just too much of an advantage. The only way it wouldn't be is if the AI was too incompetent to take care of itself.

Sandbox is sandbox and survival is survival. Just because something can be implemented in sandbox doesn't mean that it should be the de facto baseline for how the main game is to be played. I'm sick of people using that as justification for including something in the main game. Having more people makes the game easier. Too easy. Far far far too easy. If you're by yourself, you have a ton of things to do and not enough time and energy to do it. It's a constant balancing of effort and resources. Do I go set up some traps or do I finish building that wall around my base? Do I secure myself a source of fresh water or do I go out to try and loot some medical supplies in case I get injured? There's too much stuff to do and not enough time and energy for you to do it all easily. But let us say that you start with a group. Maybe four people, yourself and three others. While you're out looting medical supplies, the other three are taking care of other stuff. One guy is setting up the traps. One guy is building the wall. The last guy is building rain barrels. Because of this division of labor, each job is more successful than it would have been if you'd been forced to do it all by yourself. More traps are set and more food is gathered to feed the group. The wall is built, giving everyone a safe place to plant crops, rest and sleep off any injuries being treated by the medical supplies you recovered. No one is thirsty because the person working on the rain barrels was able to build a substantial amount of them because he didn't have to worry about anything but the one job he was assigned. There is a net gain of resources that resulted from working together as a team. A team that gives you an unfair advantage because you started with it. This gives the lone survivor an unfair disadvantage. As such there is no reason for anyone to be a lone survivor. Starting with a group would be seen as the most optimal way of playing the game. Sure, you could find a group later and enjoy all of those benefits, but this comes at a cost. It costs you time to find these survivors. It costs you effort to get them to know you and trust you enough to work with you. It costs you the risk of them deciding to just shoot you and take what little stuff you've acquired for yourself by yourself. Meanwhile the guy that started with a group at no disadvantage to himself is miles ahead in the game because, once again, he started with an unfair advantage. I'm not saying don't start with survivors at all. I'm saying don't make it the default mode of gameplay. Don't make it the only choice that matters. Give it an offset that causes players to rethink the viability of it and maybe opt to start by themselves and form a group from people they find later. It's fair. It's balanced. It's good game design. It gives the player a choice with any pick being equally viable with all the rest, leaving it up to the player to pick whichever one fits their preferred playstyle.

I don't agree with any of that. At all. Having more hands means being able to perform more tasks quickly and easily. One person could be securing the safehouse while another is out looting and still another is setting up the farm or the traps. You start by yourself and your options are limited by your capacity to do stuff at all. You start with friends and family and you can get more done more easily than you could by yourself. Starting with a capable group guarantees long term survival because you'll have people you can trust watching your back. It'll make the game too easy. It's like the perks you select on character creation. You can't just take everything you want for all the advantages you can get and not have any downsides to it. Starting NPC group members should be the same way or else there'll be no point in not starting with them. Positives and negatives. Pros and cons. You must achieve balance for there to be any meaning at all, or else why bother in the first place? If there's no way to balance, what's to stop me from checking every positive listing on the board and just start the game out as the Undisputed God King of Stats and Traits™? Everyone will do it, because it's seen as the most optimal way of playing.

This has been suggested a bunch of times. Generally speaking, I'm afraid that it would be much too powerful an option to have. Not without nerfing the idea of it in some way. Otherwise there'll be no point at all in not starting with friendly survivors in your group. It'd be too much of an advantage to pass up. I like the possibility of including it as an option, but making it so that anyone you started with would have something about them that makes surviving difficult in one way or another. A sibling who is a complete asshole, making it harder to join up with survivors later on down the line. A spouse who is horribly injured and will need a significant amount of time to recover before being useful. A group of people who all fucking hate each other and getting them to work together on anything is next to impossible. If you include something like that, it would maintain the feasibility of deciding to go it alone yourself since the hassle of starting with people could outweigh the benefits.

Find his hole and put a loop snare in front of it. That'll get him. Alternatively, you can surround your garden with short stick fences that have loop snare entrances and your garden will be the perfect bait for fresh rabbit meat. Potato and rabbit stew, yum!

Don't know if this would be better as an official mode or a mod, but I'd love the idea of having a Last Man Standing multiplayer competition mode. Multiple survivors across multiple barricaded houses under constant siege. Last survivor still standing wins the round.

I think getting sick from the rain is complete B.S. You don't get sick from being wet, you get sick from picking up bacteria/viri from other people or objects. Eh, you don't get sick from the rain so much as getting cold from the rain gives your body just the sucker punch needed for a preexisting illness to jump to the forefront and actually make you sick. Your body is always fighting off some kind of infection or another and being wet and cold certainly doesn't help with that.