DreadLordNaf

Gamepad feedback: Overall your gamepad integration is really good. I play with gamepad due to some accessibility issues with my hands and I only started playing PZ as it was one of the few non-console type games with great gamepad integration that I could enjoy. I also like playing it with a big screen beyond just my computer monitor. I purchased PZ back in 2015 and have played exclusively with a gamepad since then. Here is my review of using a gamepad for almost 8 years now: Good things - I first want to highlight what works well with your gamepad setup so that you dont think silence means they need changing. These things are actually working great: Great default setup. Many controls on PZ game mirror similar controls on a console game. Anyone who has played a console game can pick this game up really fast and intuitively know how to move, how to access things, which buttons do some form of interaction etc. Please keep this up. I wanted to mention this because of Steam Deck. Steam deck idea is great but don’t let it distract you. I owned one and found it rather clunky and I question its staying power. Every game on steam deck seems to have a different default setup forcing you to relearn simple controls with every game which is frustrating and means you can never get that good since your muscle memory needs to keep adjusting. So just keep doing what you are doing with the current gamepad controls, overall they are quite functional. Combat is good. Better than mouse and keyboard in my opinion except for hotkey swapping which I will get into later. Auto switching of control layouts depending on what you are doing. This is sooooo important to good gamepad functionality and many games never do this. You guys do though. If you are interacting with a radio, you auto switch what the control scheme for that specific thing. Same with if you are using a gun, operating a car, moving furniture, building, etc. Please keep that up and never shy away from creating new control layouts dependent on activity as this is what really sets apart "ok gamepad compatibility" from "awesome gamepad functionality". Control displays showing you what button does what. These are important and you guys always show what buttons do what on the alternative control layouts. I’m rarely ever confused (except a couple times) so please keep always showing on-screen what the buttons do in the alternative layouts. Things that could use some refinement: Hotkey swapping weapons. You have the dpad setup so we can hotswap weapons. It is nice, except when you are in the middle of fighting. You need to keep your left thumb on the left joystick to keep moving and not die, but if your weapon breaks in middle of fight there is no way to switch without stopping movement, or doing an awkward thing where you take your right hand and oddly try to use the dpad on the left side of your game controller which doesnt always work out successfully. This is the #1 thing that needs improvement in my opinion since combat is pretty crucial to this game and breaking a weap happens a lot. ---Suggestion: When in melee combat I notice that the RB button isnt assigned to anything except if you are using guns. Please consider switching the weapon hotkey selection to RB that way we can easily switch weapons completely with the right hand (RB button + right joystick for selection) while keeping our left hand on movement. If the character is using a gun, you can then make the LB button the reload control instead of the RB button. Right now LB just empties a bullet if you have a gun, not something you usually need that critically. You could switch the empty shell control to either the dpad, or make it a long-press LB option, while short press LB would reload. The odd L3 long press joystick click menu. This menu has cost me my life a few times. In the heat of the battle it’s not uncommon to be moving your joystick pretty hard. Sometimes I hold it down a second too long while doing intense movements and that awkward menu comes up which gives me the option to autowalk/crouch/sit which delays me and causes to get bitten Two of these options arent needed since they already have other controls: Crouching toggle already exists when you normal click L3. Sitting is available from the menu option by hitting X. ---Suggestion: Please consider removing this menu from L3 long press. It’s not needed and kills the player from time to time. The only semi useful thing here is autowalk since the other options have controls already. If you think it’s useful please switch autowalk to maybe some sort of combo control so that you dont accidentally do it? Hotkey slots for non-weapons. This appears to be the one thing the game control setup is lacking (or I’ve just never discovered it). The ability to have things like beta blockers on a hotkey setup. Though I swear long ago you guys did have this on gamepad, or maybe not... ---Suggestion: I realize the controls are getting pretty used up at this point, so I dont have any great ideas quite yet. But I think you could allow the setting of a hotkey through the existing options in inventory when selecting an item (like you can select a "favorite" right now), then maybe have a similar radial menu to the weapon hotkey but on a different trigger button. Ability to customize. It's not clear to me how to customize my game controller setup. I read you can maybe do something with config files but I've looked there and the customization seems limited. For example doesnt look like I can do the change on my own to make the weap hotkey the RB, then switch around reload/empty shell to different ones. Doesnt appear to allow that level of fine tuning. Any more customizability would great. Overall though your game control setup is better than 90% of games so please keep supporting it. Thanks.

Have you tried with 10 years later + barricaded world mod? It decays a lot of natural fences, so no way to have abusable area anymore. It makes holes in them that would develop over time in such an environment. I forget which mod exactly but I use both of them and one of them does that.

I laughed at that more than I should have. I been playing on a MP server and this is sooo true. First Aid is used quite a lot here since 75% of my injuries are fractures or severe cuts from seeing a large abandoned player base, getting excited to loot it, then walking off a hole in the floor on the second story... But the char traits for first aid still aren't useful. Most MP servers have skill leveling xps boosted so with just a few injuries and diligent bandage replacing you can get your skill up to 1 or 2 quite quickly.

Well they aren't exactly the same, that previous water one was just water, and wall one was on stone walls. Seems like really they need a better suggestion tracker feature here, like they do with bugs. Then they can mark the threads like things "rejected, accepted, thinking on, etc." This would help thread clutter more than anything. Right now people dont know if they rejected or ignored it, or just didn't see their suggestion. And so probably think to themselves if they re-suggest but with a slight variation maybe that would be better.

It's been raised many times but I still think its worth emphasizing: we shouldnt need to be forced into carpentry in this game unless we want to build our own buildings or furniture from scratch. You shouldnt need carpentry specifically for alternative basic walls or water collecting. Zombie apocalypse lore from films and stories shows survivors managing quite well without carpentry skill. I mean when is the last time you can even remember a zombie show where one of the chars was a carpenter? Water collecting without carpentry: In-game suggestion: cooking pots, buckets, etc, left out in the rain would gather tainted water in the rain. Rain collectors would still be useful as they gather much more, and thus would support things like farming better. Effective walls and barricades that didn't require much carpentry: In-game suggestion: While there aren't tires in the game, there are a lot useless items. You should be able to take almost any number of items, some sheet rope or ripped sheets to tie them, and then bundle them all together and make a small or large "pile of junk" you can stack 4 of them together (or whatever number is appropriate) to make junk walls out of.

First off, super cool mod. Appreciate the time and effort put into this. I been using it on Zeeks MP pvp server and makes for some fun times.. Anyway I had a question on the big movable containers, like wheel barrow, shopping cart etc. When I first equipped one, it seemed cool. Like a big mobile storage. I could overload all my stuff, move somewhere, then drop it off. But I soon realized this wasnt possible because the wheel barrow was so overloaded it couldnt even fit on the open ground :/ So I had to unpack the wheel barrow and scatter all the stuff over the ground before I could unequip which made it very cumbersome. Looking back Im also really lucky no zeds came while i was pushing it around as there wouldve been no way to unequip it. Am I not using these right? Is there a way to unequip a wheel barrow or shopping cart with a single action when its overloaded more than the capacity of the ground spot you want to put it? Or are there plans to eventually make these like that somehow?

I don't think suggestions should be anchored on what one person can do in real-life but on what random people who might survive such an event could do. I came from a rural area and even in most rural areas most people don't have a lot of "hard skills". If 1% of the population survived such an event as in PZ what would they look like? Data from the American BLS suggests that roughly (with some rounding http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm): -13.5% of the population is in goods-producing (mining, construction, manufacturing) -1.5% of the population is in agriculture forestry and fishing -85% of the population is in services (retail clerks, waitress, lawyers, teachers, bankers, IT, doctors, etc) Most people thus aren't going to know the first think about logging, building, farming, etc. Even the people that do, many of them just operate a tractor full-time, or drive a dump truck, etc , they specialize and don't have the broad beginning-to- end knowledge of how to do much of that. I did know someone who had a roommate who did old fashioned blacksmithing/armor making as a hobby. But what would they do in a PZ world? I doubt they know how to mine for iron ore and smelt that into something usable... But rather than argue about who is right, it would be more useful to think about what people's practical hobbies they learned BEFORE the event translate into practical skills that could then be represented in the game. A good example is the scouting hobby which in-game translate quite well from what you would practically learn in real life from that. I know a software guy who makes his own furniture as a hobby and its quite impressive. I'm sure he is more of a carpenter than anyone in my small rural town. Making pottery as a hobby is taking off again, and would provide the basics of understanding brick making from clay etc. Same with people that knit, fish, do home improvements, play sports, etc. I think PZ could incorporate more specialized unique crafting like you mention, but it shouldn't be available to all. You shouldn't be able to learn some extremely specialized skills after the event that caused the apocalypse. The really interesting stuff should require costly character traits and then only be available to certain character with those traits. But something like that translated to PZ should take a lot of char traits and only be avail to that char as it doesnt seem like something you could easily pick up and learn on the fly as a survivor. This would also facilitate better trading and barter in MP games among the survivors for each others unique goods.

Thats true. Could just have them start in the "stale state" since that makes sense anyway for fruits that have been outside a bit too long.

Strawberries, watermelons, lettuce, quite a few in-game that help with thirst already. Seems like there is some rationale to find wild versions of some of these in the forest.

Seems realistic and would then provide an option if you can't build rain collectors or want to live off of the wild sooner with 3 possibilities: -If you forage in the morning you would have a somewhat reasonable chance at finding a small amount of clean water from morning dew on leaves etc. -If you forage any other time of day including morning you have a chance at finding a small amount of tainted water, like small puddles from the last rain etc. -With high enough foraging skill you could also find certain other plants or fruits (either new ones or already available ones in the game) which primarily help reduce your thirst (like water rich plants).

Honestly, running through the forest, especially at night, and running full speed through dark buildings should have a small chance at accidental cuts and bruises, with perhaps an even smaller but still relevant chance at something like a fracture. If most of us went running through a forest at night off of a path or trail, we would probably end up in a hospital or possibly the graveyard.

Just some thoughts on a few traits after playing the game for awhile now since I haven't tried them all. Hemophobic - I always take in every game, basically free points in SP and in MP since first aid isn't very useful when any serious zombie hit is insta infection. Points given should be less or mechanic altered. Then again if combat is altered to result in more serious non-zombification hits where you need to first aid more often, then I think the negatives of this would show through more often. Weak Stomach - I also take this in every game, again basically free points. Should either reduce points given or alter mechanic. Honestly most people in RL cant tell when food is at the early stages of going bad. Almost all food in PZ, especially canned food, should have a small chance of giving you slight food poisoning, maybe a percent or two. Then a normal char would be down for awhile but will recover. This perk though could make that debilitating and really make you think twice on using it. Slow Reader- Another free points. I don't see a way of fixing this though points unless you change the mechanic. So this negative should be removed, or changed to "poor reading comprehension." Then that skill could instead make it so skill books both take longer to read and give less of an XP boost which would make it a tough decision to take or not. Unlucky - The whole unlucky/lucky mechanic seems broken. Would suggest to remove. In MP games, I'm not sure if it was just my random bad/good luck, but seems in some case whole areas and loot finds were "unluckified" or "luckified" depending if a char with this trait visited it first. Cat's Eyes - Seems fine for the points, a small boost, but nothing worth more than two points. I take it occasionally. Fast Reader - See above with slow reading. It could still stay in since the bonus isnt that good. Or mechanic changed to "good reading comprehension" to make the actual skill book bonuses slightly better. Iron Gut - See above with weak stomach. Though I havent eaten tons of rotten food with this yet. If it makes it so you can eat rotten food with little negatives then this seems fine, or even slightly overpowered now. Outdoorsman - Seems really over powered for only 2 points. Should be 4 or even 6. Or put it back locked to one profession. First Aider - Useless because of how useless first aid skill is now. I hope they change combat mechanics to make first aid more useful overall. Graceful - Graceful and Inconspicuous I put in the same boat. I usually take them because their bonuses are significant and noticeable but its unclear exactly what they do. Do they give a hidden bonus on top of lightfooted/sneak ? Meaning with these you can actually get a higher stealthiness than with just those skills alone and higher than if you maxed those skills? If so these are really powerful and should maybe have their cost increased a bit to 5 or 6. Or change these to just give a normal bonus to lightfooted/sneak, etc. Inconspicious - Same with Graceful though this skill isnt clear. Does it make you less noticeable in general, even when running, or only really affect sneak? Gymnast - seems fine though the 5 cost usually leaves me with points left over. Maybe make a couple 1 skill point bonus/negative ones if there will be more that cost an odd number? Eagle Eyed - Doesn't seem worth 6 points, only increases arc a bit and fade slightly. Cost should be reduced. If this had some built-in Cat's eye ability then it might be more worth it. Fast Healer - Seems pointless since most my injuries are either nothing or zombification. Hard to know what this should cost unless they alter combat/injury mechanics. Fit - Good and worth the points. Former Scout - Seems fine and worth it. Keen Hearing - I dont quite understand how this works. I got this thinking it would help me in detect zombies behind me more in dark buildings, but i dont see a difference. So can't say on this. Lucky - As others have pointed out this seems overpowered and messes things up in MP games. Should be removed or kept but with the effect of giving a small 5 or 10% chance to all rolls. Thick Skinned - I dont really understand how this works. Both games I played as this I got injured quite easily and in one got bit and infected very quickly. If your injuries showed for example a "bite mark" or "scratch mark" then it would be easier to see that you got bit but this helped it. Right now I can't tell if this really works. I haven't really tried the others. Also I should note the "Burglar" profession seems to have a hidden "lucky" trait. The time I played as this char my loot finds were amazing. Multiple axes and saws pretty quickly etc. Not sure if that was intended.

I'd think the simple solution is to keep zombie bites at their current rate of infection, but make zombie scratches and other attacks less chance of infection but more chance of serious other damage that could cause you to bleed out, etc. which would make first aid skill useful. It seems odd that in a theoretical zombie apocalypse first aid would be one of the most useful skills, but its one of the most useless here. As for what the original poster was saying about the skill reducing zombification once infected, there is a way you could add this in without violating the devs intent, a way that you see represented in a few zombie films. If the bite is on your limbs, give the option to cut if off within the first hour. You would then lose an arm for holding stuff/weapons, or a leg. So there might be some interesting use of new crafting for basic peg leg, or hook arm prosthetic. And of course first aid would affect greatly if the amputation actually works and doesn't kill you.