Coraxes

I'm not sure if you're saying that currently fire is over or under powered, or something altogether different. As it stands right now, a single campfire kit can kill every single zombie in the game. Definitely doesn't need to do more damage, thought I don't think that is what you're saying.

Haven't tried new endurance system in MP yet. When you read a skill book, you have to stop what you're doing and wait there while normal time passes by, I would imagine it would be similar. If I'm not mistaken, you don't have the rest to full in order to recover some endurance. I can see myself getting into an endruance fight with someone, chasing down someone I know to be low on HP and Endurance (I'm wanting his loot), losing sight of him, and then going around check all the spots to rest nearby. As the runner, I can see myself trying to outwit my assailant and trying to make him think I'm going to have to stop and rest nearby. Having to gauge an opponents endurance level sounds like an interest twist to current PvP tactics. I can however see the frustration at having to wait at something required on a regular basis, as opposed to the books which you can choose to put off for another time.

That is why I was pointing (in scripted events or more meta sounds) out that by the time such an event will even occur, you should long, long be ready for it. Only someone running around aimlessly for days on end in the beginning and neglecting any kind of preparation would fail to be able to do anything about it.

I think that the only way to find a middle ground for everyone to be happy about this whole new exertion system, is to just add it the sandbox options. Let those who just want to bash zombies heads in all day raise the amount of actions they're allowed to do before getting the exerted moodle. That why we can still work with the new system without alienating those who think they should be able to do more before having to take a break. Conversely, with said option created, those who want to make it even harder can turn it up, making their actions reach the exerted moodle even faster.

Oh my EG that is exactly what I long for. Having something like that going on means I MUST have a contingency plan, at any given point, in order to recover from that. Make no mistake though people, you can recover from that (at least in current builds, not sure what it was like back then). You just need to have an "oh shit" bag laying around with your primary, can't do without supplies, such as the saw, axe, hammer/nails, etc. You leave this bag laying about and when shit hits the fan you grab it (and whatever you got time for thats sitting on your shelfs) and bail. I would love to see scenarios like that. Its not even too unfeasible. In some zombie lore, like the walking dead, its been established they herds can form from something simple as one zombie making a sound and another starts to follow it and makes a sound, another hears it and follows it and then makes its own moan, and the process keeps going (think that what we have in game atm). But (in TWD lore) these herds don't stop, they all just "keep follow a sound they've all forgotten". Eventually they turn up to ruin somebodys day, and that can and should be us. You can even work it for those who clamour about being relatively "safe" out in the woods so that they get a much much lower chance of such an event, but none of us should ever feel "safe". We should always be prepared to ditch what we're doing and flee, sometimes leaving behind that one or two key items that would've made things cakewalk. Take TWD again as an example, how many times do these poor guys settle down just to find out they gotta get moving again. Now I can completely and honestly understand why people would rail against something EG's herd. If I wasn't particularly wanted herds or scripted events or whatever, I would be very cross to find this making its way to my awesome safehouse that took me some long ass time to get to where it is. So perhaps a mechanic could be put in that these particular zombies behave differently than the normal ones. In a sense that they (the majority of the herd) MUST keep moving on after X time. That way if forced out of a safehouse, one can post up relatively close by and watch until its safe to go back and deal with the stragglers.

See many many people echoing this. Not sure why so many are dead set against having random scripted attacks against you. Its not like you aren't aware (assuming it gets put in) that it could happen, Just means you constantly have to be ready for an attack and have the means to fend them off. This should NOT be hard to do by the time an attack should occur. I see people's streams and videos and can't understand why so many flip out when a small-moderate group is attacking them for whatever reason. They're brain dead zombies. Its not hard to move them to where you want them to be if you aren't prepared to engage them (which you should be! Preparation is almost everything in this game, why wouldn't it apply to zombie defense as well?) Just me two cents at least, on the whole scripted events thing.

In one of the earlier 30 builds, before the exertion/migration change, I did an 8 Months run, although I did bump their senses. With one campfire, I decimated everything in an 4 block radius around the gigamart in WP. Which eqautes to more than half of the zombies in that part of town. Rushing to forage the mats to make a raw axe for the wood needed to do it and carry all that weight to the right spot near the horde without attracting them was rough. However, after it was lit there was no stopping the destructive force this seemingly innocent tool can unleash. So much so that I've had to make myself stop using them for that purpose. I wonder if making it so a fire had HP or durability or what have you, and it degraded each time a zombie walked over it would help bring it in line. I do believe it should do what is does, just probably not so easily.

I thought I'd drop this and see how many have similar thoughts about the game. As I've mentioned in other posts around the forum, I feel currently PZ can do more in terms of punishing you for spending way too much time focusing on a single aspect to your survival. As it stands, the only thing that will directly harm your health when neglected is your thirst and hunger. Default hunger/thirst depletion rates can easily be covered with little food/water thus enabling one to power play through say carpentry or the such for the first several days. Same can be said about food as well. One can just spend a day or two doing nothing but looting food and water (which are both usually in the same place). Now I dislike making analogies to other games, but I love how in Don't Starve when you spend a whole day doing one thing and that one thing only, like gathering food, you won't make it through the night. You didn't make sure to have any firewood to fend of the death the darkness brings. Assume its winter and you'll die for the same reason, no fuel to stay warm. Now I'm not saying PZ needs to do those exact things and some don't translate well. Gathering wood isn't as fast and easy in PZ for example (even though we can gather wood with a renewable and somewhat easy to find foraging mechanic). That being said however, does anyone feel like there could be something similar implemented, as a means to help kill us faster? The easy fix of course to look into make the extreme temperatures cause more health issues, but I wonder how many would dislike having to worry about things like this. Keep in mind that a "default" starting setting would put you in a timeframe where you wouldn't have to worry too much (if at all) about the temp until you had plenty of time to do something about it. I know passing out from lack of sleep has been bounced around too.

I just wanted to say one thing about the new exhaustion system. See many posting dislike or desire to go back to something different. Fine tweaking to balance aside, I like where we're headed with this new system. Primarily for this: My largest complaint in the game is how quickly you can "rush" builds. Survival games always, always penalize those who focus on one area and not paying attention to ensuring they have all their bases covered. Planning is 90% of survival. When I spend all day (or two, or three as people I see most do) working on fortifications, I should suffer a meaningful penalty elsewhere. I should have trouble fighting hordes because I didn't bother to build or find more weapons. I should be scrambling to find fuel for that fire to keep me warm (although extreme temp doesn't cause HP loss so you could ignore it). This system doesn't implement any of those ideas, but it is a step in the right direction imo. By trying to instill meaningful penalties for not staggering yourself and planning your activities better, the meta will improve significantly and with less intrusion, like say scripted event on X day (which I'm not against). Lets just get out in the open here. The meta is extremely important here, even to those who don't care about it. The meta is what will keep this game going, pulling players back in, and just as important, draw those new players in.

Not sure what the upheaval is about sandbox somehow being inferior to survival. Seeing a lot of people elsewhere making such statements. There is nothing wrong with Sandbox. With games such as this, it is very, very unlikely two people are going to see the game as challenging exactly the same way. Sandbox is a godsend for this and players should feel encouraged to try it out, not shamed.

I tend to play with pinpoint hearing as well. Keep in mind that the "proper zombie" or what is generally accepted as such, the dumb slow shambling type, isn't meant to have such senses, making them already "unrealistic" (if we consider a proper zombie to be real ). I believe (don't quote me can't remember where I read it) I saw somewhere someone say that the devs actually want the proper zombie to move at just a plain 'ol Shambler speed, as opposed to the default Fast Shambler, but changed it because NPCs/Survivors were removed and the move was an attempt to balance difficulty. The point however is that the devs are building the game's difficulty centered on this proper zombie load out, and allowing us to increase/decrease difficulty from that point. I assume they want most players to enjoy a challenging experience from this mode first, before experimenting with options. Not sure how working on a mechanic that would get the most use only out of a higher setting outside what the norm is. Not saying its a bad idea, but I can't see myself using it outside of some pinpoint hearing playthroughs, I've never actually thought about doing something like that, I've always just tried to move away from the straggler or trap it in a room. Edit: I say it wouldn't get much use out of pinpoint hearing, but I can see that people could still get use out of this on a lower setting. I'm just used to how easy it is to not make much noise on anything outside of pinpoint. There is discussion about adding stealth gameplay elements going on right now though and would be a perfect opportunity to explore this possibility.

Will do.

Am I allowed to stream this? The initial posting said one must have permission for each new branch, so I wanted to check. Would love to expose more people to this awesome product you're working on.

I've actually been thinking the more options you can add to the sandbox settings, the more we (the players) can try & tweak stuff to find the perfect balance for the futur of survival mod. I think it would be a good way to make your workload lighter when it comes to balancing all those features, giving us alpha testers a concrete thing to look for ;o Maybe an "adanved settings" pannel with some more precise tweaks as we're not all modders and not confident when it comes to modifying the files of the game. This is one of the best ideas I've seen so far. Please, anything to help the devs load and allow more people to give more detailed feedback for them to work with.