Ohbal

When it comes to reality, things are always easier. I agree, a bucket on its own would be not very effective (but not useless), as "easy AI opponent" just said. However (using the same water collecting logic that EG is suggesting) a bucket located under the gutter of the roof, would be filled under minutes. Every Most houses with a stainted roof have a gutter system, so a bucket in Muldraugh / West Point could be a perfectly good solution. You could easily create gutter systems yourself and make those water barrels really efficient. Anyway, this is a game and I'm fine with the limitations. I also agree with Moose on the raining giving way too much now. In my farming periods, I only care to water the seed stage (and latelty I'm patiently waiting for a rain to come to start planting, and so reduce the clicking nighmare) and then forget about it. I wouldn't change it until a better (less clicking please) farming mechanic is in place, though

Here is the idea: Would it be possible to add an option in Sandbox to increase over time the zombie population? Right now starting a game with Insane number of zombies is great for laughs, but almost impossible to beat (I may have to put more effort into it, I agree). What if the zombie numbers increased drastically over time? You start the game in "normal", and after a few days / weeks / months, the amount goes to "high" and then to "very high", insane... I'm thinking in a sandbox option but it could be very well implemented in Survival

Welcome to the forums! Very nice ideas you have there. So good, that probably have been suggested a million times before. But don't worry, most of us do the same thing with our first post...

Oh dude, that picture is so f'ing awesome. I wish I was around on those builds, damn it! For my part, I apologize for the amount of times I'm able to repeat myself.

That's a problem, I reckon I face. But to rephrase it a bit... what I would like to is to be forced to leave my fortress. In the very same fashion that happens in the Zombie Lore. You get overwhelmed, and have to run and look for a new base. In TWD it happens all the time. When you think you have things under control, something happens and you are on the road again. That's what I would very much like to find in this game: the game environment actively trying to kill me. It feels so anti-lore that you feel safer with each passing day...

I'm on that boat but in this thread there is already people exposing they play the other way around (looking for different experience on each game based on their characters set up), so I guess we'll have a little bit of both. Let's wait and see

Its on the third page: Lemmy101 said: "And yes we were talking about how to provide more mechanics for water" They are talking about it, nothing confirmed, but I'd say its likely on its way. And its not necessarily the bucket thingy, I guess they are looking for alternative mechanics.

I think those "free" points come only with the unemployed "profession". In any case, after reading this thread again, I think indeed there are many impressions that will change once we get our hands into the update. For example, while reading this: Go and check this: http://projectzomboid.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/charcreation.png There is quite a big scroll bar on the traits screen. plus the ones already assigned. That's probably 4x (or more) the traits we have now... and we don't know what most of them will do. Template variety is going to increase even if every one picks carpentry either as a profession or a hobby. We'll see how it plays out... I'm already eager to do so

Hey, we work with that we have, and that was my point entirely I've been advocating for patience since the begining, as I really trust you guys. You are completely entitled to run the dev process as you like. You can give us the information at whatever pace you consider best. But you cannot be surprised by the level of noise raised on a topic like this. After all, I think for the good, we are quite an enthusiastic community Even if we are completely blind on the full picture, we may (only may) be expressing concerns that may (and only may) help to polish the system you have designed.

With repect and humbly, Its not like you have spent so much time explaining anything. Should be understandable that a big change in game mechanics will bring noise and people would want to know more. But for real now. You make it sound like we are actually being a pain! I thought this is what Early Access was about: we giving our feedback and voicing our concerns during game development. In today's gaming world is hard to voice up your corcerns without being considered a whiner or a troll. If clear answers were given, unnecesary questions would be avoided. Not telling you that you MUST give us straight answers, just that you should expect this level of questioning and noise otherwise. You may even decide not to answer anything, its fine. And just in a final effort to explain myself: I'm not suggesting LOCKING carpentry completely. I'm suggesting several ways to avoid the grindfest. At the same time I suggest to limit what a character can learn, I'm asking for implementation of some generic skills available for everybody, based on the most basic survival skills. But I'll shup up now. Wouldn't want to be a problem...

how many pills did you take and in what time? First time I broke my leg I tried to spend the days sleeping and after the third sleeping (one every 10 hours or so) pill my char almost died. So yeah, you can get sick from pills

I would advocate for two things here, patience and constructive feedback. IMO, everybody should be given a way to collect water. Its such a basic survival necessity (and so freaking easy to do... seriously, you don't need to build a rain water collector to get water. You could use a bucket, a bath, some hole in the ground that you plastify... there are dozens of ways). It just feels like an artificial barrier. As Moose65 says, as long as we are given something that somewhat guarantees our basic needs, I'm fine with it. It can be 10% as effective as something built by a carpenter, but it would give you the chance to survive. I would bet the water stored in WCs and such is likely to get nerfed at some point (or made it stagnant, I can't really see how we can drink from toilets one year after the water went down). In any case, and switching the subject to the grinding problem... I've always hated grinding, but somehow I always end up grinding in MP games. I can't help it. Since I started playing MMO games the grinding has been a burden in my soul. There are many games out there that force the player to repeat the same actions over and over. The industry hasn't really come out with any good solution so far... except in one case: EVE Online. You need time (a lot of time) to level up some skills in that game, but you know what? You don't gind them. You just state that you are learning somethimg, and a time begins to count down. You are not forced to blast 1000 ships to get proficience in aiming. You just wait for the skill to get completed while enjoying the game itself (I'm stating it all the time, but this is just my personal opinion, I'm not saying this is perfect for all). If the leveling system in PZ was to change, somehow avoiding the grindfest, I would have no problem with it. This is more or less what I tried to explain before: you are not making it impossible for people to have everything on 5. You are just making it more boring and longer. Not really a brilliant design if you ask me. If you are truly commited to have variety in chars, which is great, I would like to challenge you to make it in a different way. If you are truly commited to the design choice of limiting skills, do it for real. Just tell me that a policeman will not ever be able to be proficient at Carpentry. Cap the levels 3-4-5 to certain professions. But please...do not condemn your players to a grindfest...

I specially like your suggestions for Winter, Storms, Feral dogs and other animals, and Water... but I think you basically nailed it here

In my humble opinion there are flaws in the concept behind the new system. Let's see if I can explain my point. You still give players the chance to get the same skills, but with a XP penalty. That decission, will ultimately lead to grinding (you may consider grinders are choosing a poor game style but its not going anywhere... is on the DNA of a lot of people including myself) and grinding leads to boredom... which is what you want to avoid at all costs while playing a game.Leveling up in this game (except for the combat skills) is not really an active thing, is just clicking and clicking. So in the end, you are just making the road longer and more boring, not harder or challenging. Just.... longer. I think it would be a better idea to divide the skills between "general" and "special". The generals would be for everybody. The specials would be limited to the characters who pick certain professions or hobbies or whatever. Honestly, I'm mostly concerned about single player (this system may work better in MP) and I'm not counting on NPCs yet as I have no seen them, and a) I don't know how they will work b) I (can only) assume that they will be an option for the player, not a must have. A system (your character abilities) depending on a system (the NPCs) depending on a system (the randomness of each game) is most likely to end up unbalanced. Just my two cents!

On the exertion topic: I consider myself an active person. I practice sport 4-5 days a week, and while I cannot run a marathon, I am in a relative good shape. Have a look at what your character is doing and the time spent doing so, and then tell us again why its not realistic. As its right now, even at level zero, our characters are way above the human average. At the moment you can run for 4-5 hours a day (obviously not straight, with breaks in between). You can kill 30-50 zeds easily. This implies launching around 50-100 axe blows (with intention, aka applying a considerable strenght), and you do this while moving, running, dodging... That's a hell of a workout! Your example of marathon is also a bit unrealistic, since most of the runners who participate in these races need months to recover. The medical consensous about this is that is not healthy to run in more than two marathons every year. The fact that some people run a marathon every week means nothing else that those guys are crazy The game is not by far realistic at the moment. Its being quite nice on the fitness department. I wouldn't want it to be realistic either, as this would indeed tune down the gameplay and make it less fun. However, the previous system just made us brutal killing machines, and that's something that doesn't fit the scenario. I think we are somewhere in between realism and gamey that works quite well.

I wouldn't want to be responsible for that mate, life is hard and then you die. No need to prove anything .

4-5 in everything? In one in game week? Either you are utterly exagerating (which I think is the case but I'm terrible catching this without seeing somebody's face), or I'm doing something utterly wrong. I have a 2.5 xp boost in my last sandbox and 3 months later my toon only has maxed out farming, and carpetry. Most of the other stuff is 1-2 (and zero) except cooking which is on 4 (as can be seen, only book related skills maxed out ore close to be). My "survival" toon, after 9 months, is in similar conditions (no 2.5 boost). Which is not a bad thing, let me clarify that I'm not against this. I like diversity and all chars being equal doesn't add any spice. On the other hand, the already mentioned problem with the rain barrels will be a bad thing for SP, although I'm 99% positive TIS will give us an alternative way to collect rain water.

If I have learn something so far, is that I do not need to have the ultimate player-built-safehouse to do well in this game. Carpentry has been considered a must have in this game, but I think its so just because people like to build things. The only really valuable aspect of the Carpentry now are the rain barrels. I really hope TIS give us different ways to store rain water if the carpentry is getting this change, as otherwise everyone will pick up carpenter... or go live close to a well, which usually means the farmer's life as you are so far of everything...

Last Saturday I wish I had in my real life fridge a 10% of the stuff I have in my PZ game. I was starving and my toon was well fed. So my lost of dignity comes the other way around... oh well... that's sad

Just wanted to drop by, in case this is still on going, to say: Impressive Job Marcel!!! Those buildings look great, and the map density is awesome. Keep it up! (if you can )

That's one of the hottest topics at the moment. Indeed for some of us the game loses some challenge once you realize you can sit safely watching your crops grow, and nothing will ever come in your way. I really enjoy building things, but ultimately I'm building my safe houses to fulfill a purpose: keeping me safe. At the moment I just build becase I like to design crappy wood homes

I really don't have the feeling of playing carefully at the moment, once I reach the mentioned "safe status", aka I have a safe house and farming going on. There is no danger comming my way, only time passing. My build 30 test char is now on its 2.5 months alive, last 1.5 spent on my safe house, farming. I've chopped hundreds of trees, and hammered four times as many planks. I think I have like 20 Z's bodies or so around my safe house, that's all the attraction I draw in 45 days while making all kind of "human" sounds. I'd asume the parameters built to move the zombies can be tweaked or completely changed, right? The Meta events may have worked in the past, with smaller maps and less survival options, but right now I think they break more than they fix. I'm the first one who normally would be against scripting, but I keep getting to the game limitations in terms of streaming content, so I think the options are quite limited. You can increase drastically the amount of attention draw by the player sounds, but once you clear the area, killing the hundreds around you, migrations seems to be happening very slowly... which points me again in the scripting direction.

NPCs can't be the single answer for any gameplay mechanic not working as intended, right? I think the points raised about the amounts of Zs running low around the player are quite valid and I can't see how the NPCs are linked to them. They could draw even more attention away from the player.

I agree! Player has to be the main attract factor for Zombies, and not the meta events, which, by the way, I think are way too numerous. I hear a couple of gunshots every night while I sleep for example... those noisy neightbours...

Yours must be a lovely community!