jonniemarbles

The impression I get is that the devs *are* working on these big ticket things but they are also working on trickle improvements (like new recipes etc.). I've not been part of the community long but the devs seem very focused on improving the gameplay experience - build 32 fixed the big issue with previous builds (the so-called "farmville" effect), largely (from what I can tell) in response to feedback from the current players. I have no doubt that NPCs are receiving attention every day, but I'd rather have a trickle of little improvements and get NPCs later than zilch for a long time just to get NPCs/vehicles etc. faster. Something to bear in mind (with no disrespect to the devs): when these things are eventually implemented, they will be broken, or will break other parts of the game. NPCs in particular will make a huge change to how the game is played, affecting everything from spawning mechanics to survival strategies to "end game" experience. But there is broken and there is broken. I think the current spawn system (IWBUMS 32.5) is broken because it kills off the stealth play I enjoyed before. But it's *less broken* than every build that came before it. It's the devs duty (and one that they seem to take pretty seriously) to ensure that NPCs etc. are as unbroken as possible before unleashing them on the community (and letting us help them fix them ).

Still, this is far more preferred than "never-see-a-zombie-again" after barricading a bit. Defending things just makes things more FUN. Sometimes you just have to realize that without scripting the game comes to a halt. I find it unreasonable that people expect things to work without scripting, and expect that everything has a reason or butterfly effect which would be neat and nice, but UNTIL we get the npcs that are planned to replace the meta-events, it's 1. gameplay and experience, no matter what means are used 2. everything else More zombies, more threatening zombies + environment = true zombie survival. The more difficult, the more fun it is. My two cents. At present, though, it's not a positive experience for me - I know roguelike and random go hand in hand but too much random kills any incentive to even try to play the odds. Edit: I eventually gave up on my stealthy cook and went for a more combat-and-carpentry oriented build. The experience is less frustrating now (though I'm definitely removing hypochondria from my build, my character got a near terminal fever without even getting scratched!) as I can take out the zombies who randomly start window-licking before they become a threat. Still gets old after a while, particularly when I know nothing else but some RNG function attracted them, and I'm sad I can't effectively hide, but that's been my experience of PZ so far: there's always something irritating me about it but I *just can't stop playing*! Good work devs

The devs will do what they want (as they should) but it's ok for us all to have an opinion

Cool! Where do we find this?

One thing that bugs me a lot about this build is that zombies will attack you safehouse for no reason except that you are in it. I don't mean that you made a noise, or left a light on, or even that you were moving around. I mean that if the area is being streamed (because you're in it) zombies will randomly attack doors, windows etc. of everything around (which will include the house you are stood on the second floor of, with the windows closed, standing stationary and reading a book). I can understand this for meta events - the zombies heard something and are trying to get to it, regardless of the window/door/whatever in their way. Meta events add gameplay value for me because when I hear a gunshot I know it means the horde might try to make their way to it through my living room. But what seems to be happening is that the spread-out mechanic (or something else, IDK) makes zombies want to go "over there" for no reason even if going "over there" means banging their head on a door for 2 days until it breaks down. I wouldn't mind if this happened occasionally but what I see happening when I move through town - zombies everywhere banging their heads on windows/doors at random as I enter a new area for the first time - is totally game breaking for me. What's motivating the zombies to try and break in to 6 different houses on the street I'm passing through? Do they really want to go and stand in the living room that badly? Why do they suddenly want to do it *now*? Why, when I try to make a run on the mall 6 days in, do all the zombies in the parking lot choose *that moment* to bang their heads on the window, meaning that not only does the place get overrun, but it gets overrun at the exact same time I want to interact with it regardless of how subtly I make my approach? Is this a feature people want? For me it makes stealth play kind of a joke - what's the point in meticulously creeping past the horde when one of them will, for absolutely no reason and with relentless determination, break into your house as you sleep (then proceed to break down every window/door in the place, given enough time)? I spent a few days holed up in the room above the hardware shop in downtown WP and watched the zombies meticulously rip apart every single thing they could - there were zombies banging their heads on each side of 1/2 of a double door, the other half having already been destroyed - they didn't even try to go through the hole right next to them, just chomped away pointlessly. I'm not complaining because the game is too hard - I want it to be ferociously, horribly hard - but because this random behaviour from zombies not only breaks the realism for me but also increases the "luck" factor and decreases the "strategy" factor in survival. Yes, there will always be both, but when I die I want to feel like it was because I was reckless/made a mistake, not because the RNG/whatever mechanic decided there needed to be a zombie in my silent, curtained room. A simple fix for this (he said, knowing nothing of how hard the coding would actually be) would be to stop the zombies spreading out to points that can't be reached currently without opening windows/doors, in the same way the game decides whether or not zombies can spawn in a location. No idea if this would be a simple fix or not, but it's my 2 cents. /Rant

I like this idea on paper but in practice: A.) It's gonna take a while before the zombies even become a thing in your world (especially if they are one town over) B.) Unless you hardcore RP it, you will basically act like an insane person from day 1 - breaking into people's houses and stealing their food, hoarding weapons, building "unnecessary" fortifications for an apocalypse only you know is coming C.) If you do play like this, the game will be incredibly easy - you'll have your megabunker, farm and arsenal all ready before you even see one Z D.) If you play this way, how are people going to react to you? Will you get arrested for stealing things? Will other NPCs treat you like you're crazy/wonder how the fuck you knew what was going to happen when the Z-bomb actually hits? E.) If you don't play like this (either because of RPing or in-game restrictions of some sort) what do you do? Go to "work"? Buy things at the mall (requiring things like money and a trade system, which I guess some version of will be added along with NPCs)? And this is before I've even gotten into the insane coding challenge of tracking all the thousands of NPCs/Zs, who's bitten, who ain't etc. etc. Overall I don't think this is a mod, it's a whole different game, sadly

I get cornered *way* more often in this build - it's impossible to get clear of zombies, everywhere you go there are more of them, and even fighting one brings in a huge herd.

Climb sheet rope. Just died because I climbed through a (broken) window instead of up a sheet rope.

Really not enjoying the spread-out mechanic at the moment - makes it impossible to lure zombies away from an area as the moment the area is "emptied" it refills with any Zs who didn't follow your pied piper tune. As the improved mechanics mean zombies are VERY good at following you if they see you sneak in some place this makes life objectionably hard. I kill/lure all the zombies away from the house I want, head back there and find it dotted with zombies. Considering how responsive zombies are to noises etc. now it's nigh-on-impossible to survive for even a few days (and removes any sense of achievement for "clearing" an area. Don't get me wrong, I don't think "cleared" areas should stay clear indefinitely, but more than a few hours would be nice.) Edit: Perhaps it'd work better if the likelihood for an "empty" space to pull zombies in increased over time? So a space that has just been cleared won't *immediately* have new Zs shamble into it, but rather the risk of it dragging in Zombies gradually increases hour by hour? That said I'm not married to the idea of zombies filling empty spaces anyway - i'd rather see a small population that don't react to meta-events allowing for high and low population areas.

I'd like to see it where, if you've been smashing the crap out of a zombie for a while, that zombie is slower/less lethal if you don't kill it. It would make some sense that my smashes would have done *some* damage and they shouldn't just get back up and run at me as quickly as ever.

ATM crowbars are totally useless, the only reliable weapons (on my non-combat-optimized character) are baseball bat, frying pan and axe. Everything else takes like 500 hits to kill a zombie (or won't even knock them down half the time), is incredibly loud or breaks after 30 seconds (this could be applied to frying pan actually, but at least they're still useful once broken). It feels kind of silly that a frying pan takes 3-5 hits to kill a Z whilst a crowbar can take easily double that. Edit: It's also worth noting that most lockpicking requires something like a flathead screwdriver as well, to turn the lock once the tumblers are set. A cool/balancing thing about this is that it means you would need both hands equipped to pick a lock, making it way more dangerous if a Z *does* sneak up on you. Personally I wouldn't have a problem with paperclips etc. being used as picks - it might not be perfectly realistic, but where exactly in game are you going to find lockpicking tools right now? Police station evidence locker maybe?

A lot of places (see: the mall) can't be broken into at present without smashing glass/an entire door down. I'd love to see some way of breaking into these places without making so much noise - the burglar profession in particular should be able to pick locks with the right tools, and perhaps this should be learnable by others too. Credit cards, paper clips and bobby pins are obvious options for lock picking/jimmying doors at present, but maybe glass cutting tools too?

I'm finding survival on this build frustrating ATM. I've played at least a dozen games in a row with survival times < 3 days on all of them. A lot of the time I find myself spawning in a 1 story house with no weapon or bag... without either of these items life becomes extremely difficult (and this is with the "lucky" trait, I still sometimes search a dozen houses before I even find a rolling pin). A lot of my runs have been centred around getting an axe, hammer and nails early so I can start making a house *somewhere* moderately safe but getting to the locations where these items are kept is extremely difficult with the current populations. I often end up sneak/running from house to house, trying to gather anything that's remotely of use and/or find a bed for the night. Generally I die on the morning of the second day because I couldn't make it to a house without alerting the half dozen or so zombies around it, couldn't clear them all with just a frying pan and so woke up to find the whole place infested. Reload, start again. Sleeping in a downstairs, unbarricaded room is practically a death sentence even if I didn't get followed and manage to curtain the windows - idle zombies seem to start windowlicking for no reason (not necessarily an issue in-as-of-itself) and I wake up surrounded (though weirdly only once i've finished sleeping - breaking windows don't wake me up, instead the zombies politely wait for me to finish my nap before they start chomping, and more than once I've managed to fight them off, which is a bit reality-breaking). My character build (chef with lucky, hypochondriac and weak stomach) may have something to do with this - my pure survival skills are low, but I want to build a character who can cook rotten food. If I spawn somewhere that isn't a house my survival prospects tend to be much better - spawning in the motel, for example, is a godsend as I'm near certain to find a baseball bat and a good bag before i have to leave, making survival an actual option. It just sucks when the only available strategy early game is sprinting from house to house, with zombies constantly following cos I can't outsneak them all, and knowing that even if i do safely get inside somewhere it will likely get marauded by wanderers just by virtue of that part of the cell being streamed. On which note: it's a little strange at present the way areas you're in/have been in will be totally ransacked whilst "new" areas are untouched. It makes it feel less like the city is full of deadheads and more like they're only around when I am (which, I guess, is true). Anyway, enough whining. Keep up the good work. I've spent 75 hours on this game already and loved it despite the frustrations

Other potential bindings: Loot all (in present container) Dump all (presently selected bag) Select all food (though maybe not, having to rifle through stuff is a feature rather than a bug IMHO) Add sheet rope I'll add more if I think of them

I'd like to see the option of binding more actions to keys. Specifically, I think we need a key binding for "remove broken glass". I'm a little tired of dying because I couldn't right click on the exact pixel the game wanted me to before the horde caught up with me.

I'd like to see happiness/unhappiness fixed, as I'm sure they will be in a future update. I've stopped collecting books/magazines etc. as the unhappiness moodle seems to have no effect whatsoever at present.

+1

You should be able to make fruit salad from fruit. This would help with levelling cooking and happiness when that becomes a thing that actually matters. That's it. That's my suggestion.

Please do. I really want to bake bread but have never been able to

Played 23 days worth of a map (survival mode, no tweaks) using multiple characters. Once I got past week 1 my "safehouse" was in one of those deserted areas - if I walked a street or 2 away there were huge hordes, but none of them ever came to visit, even when there were nearby gunshots. I even had a helicopter hovering overhead, zipping back and forth, but nothing came of it. Both of the houses where this has happened have been on corners - this one wasn't on the edge of town, there was an infested street to the west, but there was nothing to the north but grass and the river and the nearest westward building was probably a screen or 2 over. Something about the mechanics of the game seems to mean these places never get besieged (not that it would have been a terribly long siege - my defences consisted of a couple of sheet ropes, no barricades and one of the downstairs windows was even broken!). I didn't mind the breathing space, to be honest, and my survival was still highly dependent on me going on highly dangerous looting expeditions, but I'm not sure these "blind spots" are intentional. Two weeks isn't really long enough to know for sure whether a horde would have *eventually* come my way either. Sadly my third death saw me experiment with burning down half of west point, so I guess I'm gonna be starting a new game. I seem to perpetually reach the point where I can start the "end game" then die trying to get the final item I need (in this case a simple saw for the barricades I may never have actually used, sigh). Hopefully my next character will actually get his farm, barricades and water set up in one of these corner houses so I can tell you for sure how long they actually stay quiet.

Fire is currently useful for: Killing a lot of zombies very slowly Burning down half the map Fire is not useful for: Actually escaping a horde (now you just have to escape a horde *that is also on fire*) I would not be adverse to zombies being afraid of walking directly into fire, making molotovs more of a dispersal tool than a total map apocalypse tool as they are now. I don't know how zombies that are *already on fire* should behave - it would be kind of odd to see most of the mob scatter apart from a tiny core of burners who are still coming right for you.

"Click to skip" only appears when loading an old save, not starting a new one. This may mainly be an issue for me as I start a lot of new games because I suck a great deal.

My experience of survival mode has been extremely varied. The majority of the time I've survived less than a week but generally if I can get over that hump it's a very different experience. I once spent 2 weeks grinding carpentry in a house on the corner of the suburbs - chopping trees, sawing, all that noise stuff - and saw maybe 5 zombies that entire time. On another run I broke down a single internal door and attracted literally hundreds of them. Personally I am not opposed to there being quiet areas but agree that there should be a small minority of zombies that don't react (oor react less) to meta events and clumping so that "quiet" does not mean "deserted". Mostly I love the new mechanics, but I would argue for a lower population on day 1, steadily rising over the first week or so to current levels. A LOT of my runs are spent ineptly sneaking from house to house trying to find even a usable weapon/bag - the absolute basics really - then getting in over my head and dying. A little time to find your feet would need the frustration and up the fun IMHO. Edit: this was all on survival mode

Starting a new game takes a while (can be a couple minutes on my machine) but it then drops you straight into the game. Would be good to have a "click to continue" button so I can go and make a cup of tea, look at a web page, whatever while it's loading without worrying I'll come back to find my new character standing around being gnawed on. Edit: Starting the game in "paused" mode would work too

Well, now I feel stupid(er). I'll check this out next time I'm in game. Thank you!