Maderas

I think the game should be officially released before people start worrying about monetization or merchandising.

Hershel's the only character I actually sort of like anymore, and he definitely has his annoying moments as well. Really, the way the show is written is just... bleh. I couldn't agree with Romero more about it being a soap opera with the occasional zombie. Rick's constant dramatic monologues, the baby-daddy drama we had with Rick/Shane/Lori, the exceedingly cheesy conversations that crop up about faith, perservance, or whatever topic the characters have picked to wax philosophical about during that particular episode... it gets to be too much. I had hope that Rick would finally grow a pair after the ending of season 2, but then Lori kicked the bucket and he went right back to square one. And speaking of cheesy: that reveal of the Governor last episode felt like I was watching a saturday morning cartoon. That's not even touching the bad writing that revolves around the group's chronic stupidity in order to create tension (like Hershel casually chatting with people while he's got a dead dude on a gurney literally right next to him who he knows is going to turn into a zombie at any moment). I think a lot of these problems (stagnant plot, reusing the same villains, dragging shit out forever) are attributable to AMC's greed and constant attempts at cutting the budget. They've changed show runners over it... what, three times now? I remember there was actually an article floating around back between seasons 1 and 2 about how AMC wanted less zombie scenes to cut down on special effect costs and extras. Yes, they want to cut zombie scenes out of a zombie show... a zombie show that is their flagship series by now as far as ratings go. If I had to pick one character I hate more than the others, though, it would be Andrea. Mainly because she was one of the better characters in the comic book and I'm apalled by how utterly they destroyed her in the show. She was completely unlikeable even before her ridiculous little romance with the Governor. I disliked her so intently that I can't help but automatically dislike any character Laurie Holden plays now.

My performance has gone from mostly great to really, really bad with the interim build. Constant hitching, music skipping, sound effect distortion.. the works. Game usually crashes without any kind of error report, just shuts down. I'm running a GTX 580 with 8gb RAM @1600mhz and a 2700k. Checked my resources while running the game, and my CPU usage is spiking crazy high. Like hitting 90% at times which I've never even seen happen outside of stress testing with Prime 95. Switched back to the previous beta version and everything is smooth again. EDIT - redownloaded the interim build and it's not quite as bad now. Still pretty bad, but playable. My CPU usage still seems inordinately high but it's not maxing out anymore. That was... strange.

The barbed wire was a addon to be completely honest with you but everything else is legitimate. I don't want to lie on that because I would sound like a complete jackass so yes I used a mod to build the fencing. Keep in mind I did that before I jumped off the building and killed myself. The barbed wire was for a good look and that's all really. I grew food in a small area in the woods after building a few walls around it of course. I didn't take a pic of it before I died though, it completely slipped my mind. It was very close to the house too so I could jog there and jog back and since I made noise by going through the woods it made the hordes disperse from my house. (farm area - http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.5812163022574812,0.35032372947171986,85.39800408949897) (house/fort area - http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.5691499990994789,0.34525214068455706,147.56775106665418) Hmm... interesting. I've tried the "hide garden somewhere away from safehouse" approach before but my crops always become stunted or disappear if I'm gone for longer than a day.

The best way to survive is to outsmart the system by building a base. How did you get all that barbed wire? I've literally never seen it spawn. And how do you grow food? You'd still have to go down to tend crops or you'd eventually starve to death. Cool base, though.

The problem with this safehouse is that if you leave the grid it's in while there are hordes nearby, the game will stream them inside the fence when you come back. Has accounted for my last two deaths. Really, though, nowhere is safe with how the metagame currently works. The events will always bring multiple hordes to your doorstep sooner or later.

Does a game have to have a defined ending point in order to be challenging, then? Is it possible to win a game if it does not end after that 'win' condition has been met? Or does it merely need to give you an overall objective which will cause the game to end if you lose? Let's take The Elder Scrolls as an example. Oblivion and Skyrim both give you an objective from the very start, the first step on a main quest that culminates with you saving the world - and, ostensibly, if you ignore this quest, the world will end/be enslaved/bad things will happen. Does that mean these sandboxes are challenging, or does the lack of a concrete "you have lost, the world is now ending, game over, please restart" mean they are without challenge? What about the first Fallout 1? It could, in many ways, be considered a sandbox - you were free to explore as you chose and do as you wanted. If you ignored the main objective for too long, however (recover a water chip) the game would end in failure and you'd be forced to start over. Does that mean Fallout 1 was challenging? I'm not trying to come across as being combative, I'm just genuinely curious as to how you'd define it. Wouldn't trying to beat the high score be a self-imposed challenge unless the game explicitly listed it as a goal and punished you for failing that goal? In most fighting games the objective is merely to beat the level without dying; in your suggestion, if I'm understanding your definition correctly, each stage should compare your score to the highest recorded one and the game should end if you didn't beat it - assuming 'beat the high score' is the overall objective of the game. EDIT - What's your opinion of Don't Starve's level of challenge, by the way? I gather you thought the game had problems, but I think most people would agree that 'beating' Don't Starve (assuming you play the Adventure Mode or whatever it was called) is legitimately difficult.

Reading through this thread I'm not even sure who is arguing what anymore, so I'm just going to frame a general response that isn't directed at anybody in particular. If "A task or situation that tests someone's abilities" is the objective definition for 'challenge' being used in this thread, then I don't think it's fair to say sandbox games inherently lack challenge just because the game doesn't formally challenge you with a win/loss objective. If a sandbox game has challenging combat then the combat is challenging whether or not you choose to partake in it. Saying the sandbox game has no challenge in that example would be the same as saying a game like Dark Souls (note that I have not played Dark Souls; I just see it held up all the time as the de facto example of a 'challenging' game) has no challenge because you can choose to spend all your time sitting in the safe tutorial area... and if checkpoints/continue options after death remove challenge, then it's impossible for any game other than roguelikes with permadeath to be challenging. Now, if you're imposing rules on yourself to artificially inflate the challenge in a game, say, "I'm going to attack everyone I see using only the worst weapon I possess", then obviously you would not take those self-imposed rules into consideration when you're evaluating the overall challenge of said game. All that aside, and in my opinion, GTA games aren't usually very challenging on the whole. They're more concerned with being accessible and fun - lock on targeting, aim assist, things like that. There's obviously challenge there to be found, though. Surviving with a five star wanted level isn't particularly easy unless you're cheesing the game somehow like hiding in a building with only one blocked entrance. Some missions may be difficult. There may be optional secondary missions that are hard. Etc.

Alright. So, having made more attempts than I care to recount in the past 4 days I feel fairly confident in stating that the "multiple safehouses around map" approach does not work in the Steam beta version. I had one set up in the bar to the south, another at the walled off house to the north, and a final one out at the farm, and by 2 and a half weeks in all three were surrounded by multiple hordes that would not leave no matter what I did. At this point I think either the migration is buggy in the beta as well as the spawning, or the game is just spitting out infinite zombies that never leave their positions.

I don't know. Like you said, it's difficult to define. I guess it just seems a little.. ephemeral, maybe? I don't care for the tower defense aspect. The survival aspects look like they take a back burner to building traps and shooting up waves of zombies, which, while I'm sure can be fun (especially with friends) it just seems like it would get boring awfully fast. I have the same issue with State of Decay. I keep hearing everywhere what a blast it is, but whenever I watch a video I can't help but think it looks very shallow for a 'sandbox survival simulator'. And while I don't rate them that highly as a criterion when it comes to buying a game, I have to say that the graphics are very off-putting. Minecraft benefits from its blocky/LEGO aesthetic which makes its poor visuals easier to overlook. Zomboid has a stylized isometric art style going for it. 7 Days to Die just looks... ugly. And old. All that said, I'll probably shop it around to a couple of my friends to see if they'd be interested. It does seem like it could be a lot of fun in MP (for a while, anyway), I'm just not entirely convinced it looks $35 fun. It's definitely not something I'd purchase for the single player as it stands now; I don't enjoy mindless blasting unless I have partners to participate in it with.

I enjoy both PZ and Minecraft, so I'm surprised that this... doesn't look like fun to me. At all. I've been watching videos for the last 15 minutes and it's just not clicking. I'd also have to agree that $35 for access to what appears to be an extremely early alpha seems awfully steep.

How are you all able to build these huge fortresses? I'm lucky if I can build a couple water barrels and walls before I'm surrounded by multiple hordes.

The devs should add actual suicide into the game and then let it 'slip' to FOX news. Once the controversy settled, the game would probably have a few hundred thousand more copies sold. When I'm running around with the pistol I always keep one bullet handy in case my dude gets overwhelmed, then I make pretend he uses it on himself rather than being eaten alive when I delete the savegame and start over.

Everyone sleeping all at once rather than in shifts doesn't make much sense from an immersion standpoint either, though.

I don't really see any way to make it work for MP. I'm guessing it will be removed if you're online. Sucks for immersion, maybe, but a sacrifice I'd be willing to make for the experience of playing with and against others.