Ziggylata

Just thinking out loud here, which I hope invokes some discussion. First aid is pretty important and I understand why everyone can perform every medical action, having a wound you couldnt close would be a rough deal. However, this kind of makes the first aid skill kind of useless. If a level 1 first aid skill can stitch, treat a wound and bandage it properly, why do I need to level it up? The short answer, you dont and youve never needed to and any leveling of first aid is simply a bonus to its effectiveness. While this would be a raw deal for everyone else, given this games nature, I think itd be better to see first aid become a valuable skill and one that locks out low-level characters from being able to perform some actions, much like how nearly every other skill does such as carpentry, electric, mechanic. As it stands, I dont think ive ever worried about my first aid skill a single time since ive started playing once I knew how it worked. Positive traits could supplement this change, such as one that gives a small boost to first aid right away so you can still perform the important basics. Obviously, this is just my thoughts on the top of my head and I havent thought it through more than this, please share what you think of this? Maybe you agree with first aid being useless but not my suggestions. Let me know.

Im quite interested in the idea of players names NOT always being above their head. Looking at those foggy screenshots makes me wish that those names just werent there. I think thatd be a lot more immersive and I think itd be a lot cooler to almost lose your friends in a crowd if you look away. Granted, this should be an option, but I think itd be a great one for public servers.

Is there any focus on PvP being consistent? Im not too worried about PvP since its sort of a secondary aspect of the game, but I hope its functional because it would allow MP to be a lot more interesting and dynamic.

Next up is second floor no staircase protection removal?

Glad to see car cheese removed. Theyre still useful, the speed of those zombies got slowed dramatically but no more invincible car bases.

Those bayonets look euphoric. I hope this ties in with the spear skills.

Fences and windows should be soon too, id hope before build 41 is finished.

That is. How can you fight if fighting only brings an entire crowd towards you no matter the scenario. Zombies are so evenly distributed you kind of HAVE to pull them towards your starting zone because theyre placed every 15 or 20 tiles in clusters of 4 to 10. Stealth in this regard is a nightmare and combat is worse. You cant sneak much since your stats are low and your room for error is lower, you cant fight because you have no weapons and the combat is unreliable. Its essentially a bad thing no matter how you phrase it.

Yeah, I want to see more combat stuff, myself. Right now if 3 come at you at the same time its just going to be you spamming shove until one/two of them fall over and you beg the game not to send a 4th at you or youll lose. Stealth for me isnt my thing but combat is a nightmare because you literally cant fight too many and they all come at you at the same time and they all group up in clusters of 4 to 10 even from the first 2 or 3 minutes ingame. Also im sure that even with poor eyesight, someone could tell that someone else is down the street like you said, but how can they tell the difference between a human and a zombie just from a shape, especially if im covered in copious amounts of blood and have the same general dirty appearance. How can they tell im not them and how can they always know exactly who they are and never make a mistake? This isnt stuff that should be ignored in my opinion.

Hopefully we can see shit like this fixed in the new update cause this directly caused my death.

Im happy to see the animation-canceling I reported being addressed already. Will we be seeing any changes to zombies going over fences and through windows? Ive found a lot of people are just looping hordes through windows and fences to get free hits in while they're on the ground. Id hope its not intended cause its quite an immersion breaker to see stuff like that.

Thanks for bringing this to attention, ive noticed this myself a lot and been frustrated, but it always seems to slip my mind when talking about problems I have with the game right now.

Im going to be blunt here, since you dont seem to understand. Id like to preface this with "I do not dislike you as a person" and "I am not attacking you". Please, stop telling me to play the other gamemode and stop telling me I have to play a certain way. I can play the current Apocalypse as it stands, it is not too hard for me and there is nothing there that makes me want to play another mode over Apocalypse. There is nothing preventing me from doing a good job in Apocalypse and you are not required to play the way that you play to survive in Apocalypse. Im not going to play Survivor any more than I already have and I am not going to be providing feedback for it as its a mode thats meant to be easier. I do not care if the description says "Combat is often best avoided" because im going to participate in the combat regardless. I do not care what you would like me to play or where you want my feedback. I am an Apocalypse player and it is the mode I prefer, im going to play it how I want and im going to express my opinions and ideas about it because my feedback isnt less valid because you say so. I have been streaming this game on twitch nearly every day since Build 41 showed up on IWBUMS, I have enjoyed most of it and found a few problems and i am providing my feedback on those problems and giving my opinion on those problems so they are at least noted. If you tell me to play on Survivor again im going to lose my mind, there is absolutely no need to keep throwing "go play survivor instead" and "youre not supposed to play like that". Even if I approached Apocalypse with a stealth focus in mind, it would still have a lot of the issues I have talked about in my post. Sorry for being so blunt but talking to you about this is like talking to a brick wall when you just throw "go play survivor" or "go provide feedback for survivor" in response to everything I have to say. There is no need for that as im of the opinion that "Survivor" and "Builder" should not even be options to begin with. I am of the opinion that games like this should have The intended mode and then other options available. For me, Apocalypse is that intended mode. If you need another example for this, Halo 3 has a difficulty selection of Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary. Heroic has the subtext "This is the way halo is meant to be played." and I feel Apocalypse fills this role properly. Apocalypse is my favorite mode by far and im in no ways saying "Apocalypse is bad" with my post. I am always wishing for games improvement and PZ is no exception and I will continue to support and hope for this games improvement as time goes on. I hope I put your argument to rest and I hope I can get some actual opinions on the rest of the main post above.

Survivor is too easy and I dont like it. I want to play apocalypse. Even with what apocalypse is, its still too much. Stealth focused but theres too many to stealth unless you play on Riverside or the really quiet areas of Rosewood. I refer to commodities. Jackets, clothing, bowls, all these things are surprisingly rare for no real reason. Like I give an example plenty of times, I spawned in a house with a battery and some makeup. The entire house only had 1 single battery and some makeup in it. Thats not really right and that kind of thing always makes me say "apocalypse loot sure is great". Its not that I want guns in every single cabinet, I dont want knives and baseball bats all over, I just want commodities that would even be left behind to be left behind. Despite the buff to soap spawnrates, its still very easy to not find a single bar of soap in 10 houses in a row. "nor being sure everything respawned" isnt my idea of perfect. Why would I bother to smash down an entire towns population of zombies and risk death only so they can maybe all respawn again. Theres too much of that garbage. I know youre going to go "survivor is for you" but it really isnt. Builder and Survivor should not be gamemode selections to begin with, its splitting up the focus. Apocalypse is the hard one and thats the one im going to play, it keeps the gameplay pure and the tension high. The only thing wrong with it are a few annoyances that ive experienced and heard others complain about or joke about as well.

I like to approach things head-on, so yes. I really think its too little. Like I said in my post, I found 1 makeup kit and 1 battery in my starting house, nothing else. Multilple houses never have pieces of clothing in them, kitchens can often not have anything as simple as a knife or can opener or even a fork or spoon. Im not asking for a fireaxe being in every box, im just saying there should maybe be items that are a lot more common? This doesnt really address the issue I mentioned, no offense, but I get what you mean. I find plenty out in the woods or rural areas as is. I wouldnt mind that either, but even so id want the minimum to be turned up so im not dealing with hundreds of respawns in a week in one part of town, cause ive had this happen 3 or 4 times on apocalypse and its just like "why even bother?"

Ive been playing a lot of Apocalypse and a lot of derivatives of Apocalypse on Sandbox and after giving it the most playtime out of all the modes, I would like to voice my opinion on some of the aspects that get on my nerves and the things I prefer about it over the other gamemodes. Ill be going through the aspects from top to bottom via the sandbox options and then talk about some specific stuff that really doesnt work I feel. Please keep in mind, these are my thoughts and are open to debate but I generally am looking to improve the experience overall. Zombie Count: High While I feel this is okay, it really has to do with the next bullet point that makes this an unweildy thing to have. Zombie Distribution: Urban Focused This doesnt seem to be working right in some areas, the first area being Muldraugh being one of the most swamped areas to start in ever. Theyre spread out so evenly that stealth to anywhere you might want to go is next to impossible as an average character and even then its quite crazy. You also cant really fight because of the loot (which ill get down to there) not allowing you to really fight any groups larger than 2 or 3 if youre being generous. Water/Electricity Shutoff: 0-30 days *DEV* Water/ElecShutModifier: 14 This is something I feel shouldnt be here like this, for anyone who doesnt know, there is a secret modifier for Apocalypse that makes water and electricity on apocalypse go off on day 14 nearly 100% of the time if not 100% of the time. This takes off some of the randomness the game is supposed to have and id like to see it back to the way it used to be where its actually 0-30 days. Darkness During Night: Normal I feel that the night levels are way way too bright, its not dark at all outside and whenever I play sandbox I almost always turn this down to Dark or Pitch Black. Night-time without cat-eyes is bright and flashlights have nearly no place. Not only that, but I feel the zombies can see you just as easy at night as they can in the daytime and this is another thing id like to see modified, a risk/reward ratio for going out at night where you cant see but neither can they. Farming Speed: Normal In my opinion, this should be slowed down. Cabbage and other fast-growing crops give so much food so fast that my Apocalypse character has absolutely no need to go out and loot, as it stands ive got 3 or 4 freezers full of farming food and im only 3 months in. Sadistic AI Director Helicopter: Once Meta Event: Sometimes This needs some work. Helicopter is one of the most anxiety events you can have happen near your home and it only happens once. As I put in my point above, I spend a lot of time not going out on Apocalypse once im set up, the Meta Events do not contribute or affect my home-life in any way and im not too far away from an urban area. Helicopter would be a great problem to throw at me but it only happens one time. I feel there are not enough late-game meta events to challenge my comfortable home life, theres not enough to happen to anyone when youre getting towards the late game. The only thing I can think of would be Winter, provided you dont have the food you need (which I do and you could supplement with foraging, fishing or trapping). Its one of my biggest game-fatigue gripes I have with this game and theres a few more ill be talking about. Decaying Corpse Health Impact: Normal You can expand this a lot. Currently, this doesnt really do anything or impact the game at all unless theyre literally in your house. I feel even walking through corpse-dense areas could and should give you diseases and illnesses, this would make "prone to illness" less of a free point trait and resilient might be taken more than not at all. Currently, the only corpse management I ever do is outside my immediate living area. Loot Rarity Food: Rare Weapon: Rare Other: Rare Oh boy, where do I even begin here. Im going to be blunt here, there is no reason my starting house should have 1 battery and some makeup in it. Thats not a joke. There is a lot that needs to be done with the loot as I often find it frustrating to not find a single article of clothing in multiple houses, to not find any kitchen knives or can openers in any houses at all. To go through a warehouse and find that 50% or more of the boxes inside do not have a single item inside. Theres a lot of work here, im not griping too much at the food or weapons (although its a bit silly) but theres a lot of work I feel needs to be done with the commodity items, like, by a lot. The early-game is a lot of going from house to house, hoping you dont get spotted by a group and hoping you find even just one single good item so I can defend myself without spamming shove. Its not unfair, its not cheap, its just extremely tedious and RNG reliant. Clothing Degradation: Normal I think this needs to be slowed down but not as much as the "slow" option does. On normal, only about 6 hours will propel my clothes into the dirtiest and bloodiest they can be. On Slow, I can go nearly a week before I hit the same point. Weapon Multihit (off) This is complicated, I like this being off. However, id like to see some experimentation. What ive found is when youre playing and get swarmed by 2 or 3 at the same pace (which is doable to fight off), the best way to deal with it is to spam shove until one or two of them fall over so you can actually attack one of them. If you want to run away, you need to spam shove until you get a window of opportunity most of the time. I dont want to hit multiple zombies at the same time, but maybe shoving two at the same time would make it a lot less reliant on spamming shove until something just works out. This is something that would desperately need to be tested as I feel it might not work out or might make the game too easy, but the situation I have described is a common one. Cars in general I dont know much about cars but for me, I think the spawn rate is a bit too low, theres not a lot of vehicles that just, exist, at all. Id be fine if there were a lot of broken ones but there just arent that many in the world at all, I like cars in the urban settings just for the atmosphere they give, making the world feel more tangible to me. Car Alarm Frequency: Extremely Rare Ive never even seen this happen by default. Zombie Lore Zombie House Alarm Triggering (off) I just dont get this one, any reason for this? This is something I turn on when im playing sandbox. I just like it when zombies can shamble out of a house and I walk in and the alarm goes off. Theyre still people, theyre just dead... People... THE BIG ONE Respawn Hours: 72 Respawn Unseen Hours: 16 This is too much, this is way way way too much. I can best describe this with an example. My apocalypse character lives on the edge of town, so town is on cells im not on most of the time. There is no incentive to kill or clear out the town ever because the hordes and hordes I might wipe with my shotgun will just respawn in a few days at most. Theres no reason to do it. By extension, theres no reason to ever go in town because of this. My apocalypse character looted every building in Rosewood and now theres no reason to ever walk over there. Lately, when I make a sandbox preset, I generally turn this up to 1 month or more. Its just too much and its my biggest fatigue problem in PZ right now. Now that ive gone over the apocalypse options, id like to address a few things that bug me a bit here and there. One thing ive noticed with the new anims are the limited walking animations and lunging animations and standing animations. I know theyre hard to do, but having a lot more variety in these improves the immersion, standing anims are the worst in this regard. All zombies have the same standing idle animation and it really stands out. Sprinters should also not sprint when theyre unalerted by something (I made another thread on this but its easy to just throw in here). Combat, ive talked about the combat briefly when talking about "weapon multihit" but something new has risen from the current new combat and anim systems. Animation-Canceling. Anim-Canceling is something that was posted on a Wood Axe thread asking to reduce the endurance usage and improve the weapon overall. Someone posted a video of anim-canceling and its use in combat and anim-canceling makes it go from one of the worst weapons into one of the best weapons nearly instantly. Ive tested this myself and it works with all weapons and but best used with the sledgehammer and wood axe because of their slower swings. Generally it works like this. Holding CTRL enters the combat stance. If your weapon is in the swing state and not recovery and you let go of CTRL and move your character away (easiest to do in the opposite direction), your character will interrupt the swing animation allowing you to attack faster and negate the full 1 second recovery time after a swing. It also allows you to move away and recover to a safe distance for group fighting. This can be done with all weapons, like ive said, but its generally unreliable with faster-swinging weapons as you can only interrupt the weapon mid-swing and not in recovery. Ill be honest here, I like this but its not intended and it probably doesnt fit the PZ vision. I like it because it adds a tech-skill but it also makes combat super reliable and super strong. It also lets you use two more weapons that function different than every other weapon in the game, at the cost of a ton of endurance use (seriously, even with level 9 fitness, sledgehammer can only swing about 5 or 10 times before you start to be exerted.) Id like to see this explored rather than outright removed. Thank you for reading. I know this is a big post. I ask if you respond to something, please quote the portion of text youre replying to so its easier to discuss and explore what works and what doesnt, whats "just my opinion" and whats viewed as an actual problem. I care a lot about this game and I remember when I got it on Desura, development of this game may be slow but it holds a special place in my heart. I want to see it be the best it can and improving the default gamemode would be a great start for building a lot of replay ability.

Theyre sort of busy, they cant get to everything right away. I dont think "they havent touched it yet so it must be intended" makes much sense or has much merit. Anim-canceling is something I thought about but hadnt actaully given a test until I saw your video and wood-axe goes from being a liability to being a top-tier weapon and I feel given the "wood axe isnt meant for combat" from EnigmaGrey, you should be more open minded in this way. Dont hear me wrong, I like the anim-canceling but I dont know if it should be in the game how it is.

Id disagree there as well. Survivor mode's combat is not very engaging or fun, I think its way too easy and I push in apocalypse for maximizing combat potential with the lesser abilities to do so. Apocalypse should not be "stealth only dont fight". You dont live on borrowed time in Apocalypse and multiple people on twitch including myself are living months into apocalypse with pretty much guaranteed safety and resources. You arent supposed to be able to, ive just gone in and tested it. Its absolutely not intended.

I wouldnt call it cheesing. I just went to test it out and here are my results. Assuming youre using CTRL to go into "attack mode", if you let go of CTRL and move away during the swing animation, you will cancel it at that exact moment into movement. If you dont do it while the attack is swinging, you will go through the full recovery animation. If you let go of CTRL too early, your attack may not connect with the zombie. This works with attacking downed zombies as well. This is not intentional but this sort of "tech skill" I feel can add a lot of depth into the games combat provided it stops looking like youre breaking the game. This could also be removed entirely but as it currently stands, the woodaxe and sledgehammer will return to being absolutely worthless for combat if that is the case. Ive tried anim-canceling with a few other weapons and its not bad but its nowhere near as useful or reliable as with sledge and woodaxe. Anim-canceling gives you a sort of, responsiveness, that you dont get normally. You can hit in groups without being locked in place and it allows you to actually be able to fight more than 3 zombies at a time much more reliably at the cost of awful endurance. If anyone has given this a try, theyd know what I mean. Swinging the woodaxe with level 9 fitness wont even last long, average fitness even less.

Well no, what I mean specifically is that if you arent anim-canceling like this, its a much worse weapon. Using a flaw in the games combat mechanics* to get more desirable results doesn't sound like its a good idea. I do like it but it means that anim canceling will have people jittering around and being more combat ready that they should be. I hope this gives you an idea of what I mean.

This will probably be patched out, but frankly, given how neat this is, I kinda wish it wont but I also dont want it to be a meta.

What I noticed from you playing is you not only anim-cancel to skip recovery (which I didnt think could be done), but you also move always after swing even when you dont anim cancel, negating the biggest problem I have with the weapon right now.

Very good suggestion. I also never really noticed it, ive always had my music on.

Scavenger is just what Lucky does. Cant Stand Blood should be 2 points at most. Hates reading should be 2 points at most. I initially thought it was free points until I thought about magazines and books no longer fixing your bored/sad moodles, which I feel is a huge disadvantage but not enough to make it more than 2 points. Alcoholic would be a good 4 point perk, provided creating alcohol got added in the future. Cant drive should be 4 to 6 points at most, no more than that, in my opinion.

I, too, have complained about the intense spawns in rural areas, especially in that farm between rosewood and the prison. Its like there was a party out there the night before and they all never left.