jefferyharrell

You just gave me an idea. Wherever you see those water coolers, there are always spare 3-to-5-gallon bottles in a back room or closet someplace. http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/13296-water-cooler-bottles-in-offices/

These things: They should be found in twos or threes in the closets or back rooms of offices (H. Smith Attorney for instance, or Cortman Medical), should hold on the order of 40-80 cups, and should be just ridiculously heavy. Like so heavy that it's probably more practical to leave the bottle where it is and go fill up smaller containers from it.

This is a travois: http://obstacleracingmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/sr-travois.png (I didn't draw that, so no making fun of me for it.) I'm thinking it could be crafted out of three tree branches and a couple ropes or sheet ropes. Pulling it would be slower than walking pace but faster than heavily-overencumbered-walking-pace. I could see it being useful for hauling a reasonable number of logs or log stacks, or (the thing that inspired this suggestion) dragging four or five zombie corpses at once out of your back garden. It'd probably fall apart after a few trips, too, unless strapped back together with duct tape or something. The major downside is that it would probably need its own models and animations, and that'd be a lot of work.

Except, you know, getting turned into a zombie. My point is that these things lie on a spectrum. They're not black and white. When you're talking about an everything-is-trying-to-kill-you survival game, there is naturally going to be a very wide variety of game-losing conditions.

How about the ability to add a tiny bit of bleach to tainted but contained (barrels, pots, etc) water souces for purification? That's possible in reality if the right ratios are used. I support this idea so long as having one jug of bleach doesn't mean you have potable water for a year. In real life, it's 8 drops of bleach per GALLON of water. I think the ratio in game should be significantly bigger than that so it's not ridiculous. And keeping with reality, bleach-treated water should only be mostly safe. There should still be a chance that it'll make the player character sick. No idea what a reasonable percentage chance should be. One in twenty maybe? One in fifty? Maybe a player who subsists entirely on bleach-treated water should expect to get sick on it once per in-game month, just to keep things interesting. (I totally get why it's not in the game, but this is one of those times when I wish we had a diarrhea mechanic.)

From that point of view, though, would it be significantly different from coming back to find your character had died of dehydration, or been eaten by an unseen wandering zombie? Nice point, but i pass most of my in-game time REALLY depressed because i cant find anti depressants anywhere, and i live out of butter and potatoes. Mostly butter. I think as suicide is the choice of the character and the character is mine, i should have the choice. The game actually DRIVES you in some situations, even pumping you up with the ambience and sounds, and i'm sure i'm not the only one. And as i might not be the only one, people would differ in the times to suicide or even thinking about suiciding. Setting a singular time for suicide (Highest depression cap) could make some people angry. I also believe this game is sometime gonna turn into a horror-style, actually scaring you off your sh*t when zombies approach you. That would make suicide an incredibly realistic, and still a very practical implementation. I don't disagree with any of that. Here's my question, then: How do we make the depression mechanic meaningful in the game, and also scary? I think depression should be a threat to survival just like starvation is. How can that be implemented? (I'm not getting huffy and saying "Fine, you figure it out then." I'm sincerely asking.)

From that point of view, though, would it be significantly different from coming back to find your character had died of dehydration, or been eaten by an unseen wandering zombie?

You're not going to find a lot of soybeans growing wild in suburban Kentucky. I think having long-term deficiency maladies brought on by a lack of dietary protein or vitamins is a really cool idea. The tricky part is making it clear to the player what's needed. Food craving moodles maybe? That might be too simplistic, even bordering on condescending. I think making it through a winter without fresh vegetables should be entirely possible, just challenging. Maybe a poor diet brings along with it an increased need for sleep, quicker exhaustion, that kind of thing. I don't know, I'm just spitballing.

While that's all true, one could say pretty much the same thing about pistols and rifles. An untrained person is very unlikely to hit the broad side of a barn with either one, but in the game one starts off with a bit more inherent skill than that and works up from there. Realistically, shooting anything more than about six feet away with a pistol should be effectively impossible at zero aiming skill, and even at that range it should be about a fifty-fifty proposition. But does that make for good gameplay? If a player starts out with no aiming skill, just how is he supposed to get skilled? By expending hundreds of rounds of irreplaceable ammunition on target practice? Or should weapons like that be effectively out of reach for any character who didn't start out in the right profession or with the right trait? I don't know. I'm kind of of two minds about it. I'm all for realism, and anything that makes the game more challenging is something I'm likely to support. But I think there's also such a thing as making the game too realistic, to the point where it's no longer worth playing at all because everybody always dies on the first day. Sorry. That turned out to be kind of rambly.

I think it kind of does what it says on the tin: it de-grinds some of the grind that's inherent to the game. Sometimes you're in the mood to play the long game and sometimes you want to power-level to get to the fun stuff. I think it's okay that that option exists.

Step one: Add turnips to the game as a farm-able plant with harvestable roots and tops. Step two: Add wild pigs as a renewable food resource that can be trapped or hunted somehow. Step three: Turnip greens and ham hocks. Now you're singing the song of my people.

I get that, I think. But in my mind, as I imagine it, it's more akin to dying of starvation than "any gameplay with consequence that the player cannot directly control," to borrow your phrase. If you don't keep your character fed, he dies. That's a core game mechanic. If you don't keep your character emotionally fed, he can die too. That's how I imagined it. But I'm totally open to the possibility that it's just a bad idea.

I'm just gonna blurt it out: At the maximum level of depression (which should be really hard to achieve; more on this in a moment) I suggest that there should be a chance that the player character will, if the means are at hand, spontaneously commit suicide. What I'm imagining here is a depression moodle that's nearly impossible to achieve without actively trying, that that nearly anything will temporarily relieve: reading a skill book, eating, going outside, taking a nap, talking to another character in the game (PC in multiplayer, NPC eventually in single- or multiplayer), whatever. But if the player character gets that moodle and keeps it long enough, there's an increasing chance of self-harm if the necessary item or items are in his inventory: a loaded firearm, sleeping tablets, bleach, et cetera. If it's so hard to get in that state and so easy to get out of it, what's the point of having it in the first place? This: withdrawal from antidepressants. It's been said before, including in today's Mondoid, that there might be a dependence mechanic added to the game, and of course antidepressants are there already. Antidepressants are also in finite supply; a fixed amount is created at worldgen and there can never, ever be any more. Getting dependent on them should be scary because getting off them once dependent on them would be difficult and dangerous in the Zomboid world. If this offends anybody, I sincerely apologize. I was inspired by something that happened to a friend of a friend recently. I'm not trying to be insensitive. Quite the opposite. Anyway, it's just a thought. Please don't hate me.

Now I very much want Zomboid and the Frostfall mod for Skyrim to fall in love and make a beautiful baby.

I would love it if the game included a special-case exception for rabbit starvation.

Pretty tough to maintain a lot of meat in your diet in the game, isn't it?

I believe what you're describing is the same as this bug: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/tracker/issue-1408-moodle-does-not-work-properly/ I think the fix went into 31.4, which was released last night. (Well, last night in my time zone anyway.) EDIT: Aaaaaaand I just noticed that that's your bug. Sorry. Was trying to be helpful, ended up with egg on my face.

I support this suggestion. I'm generally going to be in favor of anything that makes life more miserable. Plus I have dentist anxiety, so I'm all about putting my fears into the game.

There's a trait in build 31 called "low thirst" that does exactly that. Of course, all that means is that yours was a good idea.

I'm not sure how to answer that without getting all too-much-information. In the interest of keeping it abstract, let me just say that if you google around, you'll find that both increased and decreased sleep can be associated with depression (though obviously not at the same time in the same patient!) My thinking was that there's room in the game for depression to be more of a liability. I think it already slows the player character down a little bit, but I'm not sure that's true; it's just a subjective observation I've made through playing the game. In another thread we were talking about the new sleep-related traits, the one that increases the need for sleep overall and the one that reduces the rate at which the player character loses tiredness while sleeping. When you play with both traits, the game gets a lot harder. This got me thinking about how letting your character get depressed would be more of a danger if the character's need for sleep were linked to his level of unhappiness. That's really all it was. I was thinking it would be plausible, not necessarily something that could be quoted chapter-and-verse out of the DSM V. You know?

Not that I'm speaking from personal experience or anything, but I think it would be both entirely plausible and an added level of gameplay challenge if characters who are depressed needed more sleep. Without any bonuses or maluses a character needs what, 7 hours a night? At the highest level of depression — "find a way to forget reality" I think is the flavor text — up that to 14 hours. Just a thought.

I tried the same combo on the first day build 31 was available, and I agree it's brutal. But what I didn't try (because my guy didn't live long enough) were any fatigue-fighting tricks. Would vitamins or coffee work to reduce a character's fatigue and make it merely challenging rather than unplayable? I haven't been playing long enough to know how either of those two items work, but a character who's dependent on stimulants to get anything useful done sounds like an interesting gameplay challenge to me. A hard one to be sure, but interesting. Sleepyhead by itself, I agree, isn't bad. In my limited experience with it it seems to bump the average up from 7-9 hours a night to 10-12 hours a night. In the context of being the last person alive in a town overrun by the dead, I don't think that's implausible, and it only makes things a little harder from a gameplay perspective. Hey. That gives me an idea. Off to the suggestions forum.

And then we're just one step away from resorting to cannibalism. (Only kidding. Mostly.)

Aw. I'm going to miss having a super-strong character. It was like playing Sauron.

I think it'd be exceptionally creepy if in the dead of winter zombies stopped moving altogether unless stimulated by the player, at which point they'd lurch into motion with a loud craaaack.