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Strider

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Everything posted by Strider

  1. You know what, you've forced my hand. I was going to just shut up and accept your post but after re-reading it I realize I simply cannot do that. Ok, let's just pretend you didn't just imply an insult there and move on. I mean, you do realize using that is pretty unprofessional for a moderator? Yep. In the past. I left the forum, came back and have made every effort to be as civil as possible. However you're clearly not going to let any mistakes I've made in the past slde. No, thanks. I'll be banned from the forum for this so before I go I'm going to explain exactly why I think you're an awful moderator. I mean, really, really bad. Here goes. I posted a suggestion. A couple of other members explained to me why the didn't care for the idea and went into detail where they thought the idea fell down. I, in turn replied why I disagreed with those points and at no point did anyone insult, or like you've just done, imply an insult. In fact the whole thread was completely benign. Or was until you posted. You imply insults or use them out-right in private messages. Sometimes you don't even keep them private and you think I'd enjoy a PM discussion with you? No matter what the vindication (and I'm not vindicating the actions of that poster) there is no excuse for moderators to act this way. You've completely over-reacted in this instance as you have in the past. I couldn't stay on this forum, even if I wasn't banned. Shame, lot of good people. It's a really nice community.
  2. That's cool. Not sure I'd trust it in icy weather but cool nonetheless.
  3. Ok, but I have to ask. How can this be a forum if you're prohibited from disagreeing with one another? Isn't the definition of forum the free exchange of ideas? Now I know I've not been rude to Enigma. I've been very careful this time around and i'd respect your comment if Enigma and I we're being rude, impolite or insulting one another but we're not. He disagrees with me, fair enough. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  4. No, not at all. I've been at pains to explain that this should exist only in first bite or a difficulty below it. I think that this might have applications on harder difficulties but only to make the game more difficult. I'm not sure about that. With the reworked menu it's quite clear what the game considers difficult and what it doesn't. It's all explained well enough. Shirley a player wouldn't play first bite and then come to the forum and complain that it's too easy before playing the harder difficulties? It seems to me that your main reservation is that it coddles the user. It might do that but only on first bite or a difficulty that exists below it. There is no reason that any of the other difficulties should be touched at all unless it's to make them even more difficult. For what it's worth, I do understand your reservations. I just can't agree with them.
  5. And for the most part I agree. I enjoyed the unforgiving nature of this game, it's part of it's appeal. Just remember that people have different levels of proficiency and some might not have the option to plough hours upon hours into this game. Does anyone know how many people have bought this game and stopped playing it because of it's difficulty? When Enigma said level scaling I cringed because he wrote one line, shrugged and left. He didn't explain what he considers level scaling to mean. Level scaling (as I understand it) has little to nothing to do with what my idea is. I don't remember any Bethesda game adjusting the difficulty on the fly. Not Daggerfall, Arena, Oblivion, Morrorwind or Skyrim. I know this because only recently I had another playthrough and found as I reached higher level I could manage the game on master instead of expert due to the gear and skills I'd acquired., it's a fair point but that appeals to the likes of me and you. We enjoy the repeated dying and likely learnt something from game to game. My worry is that there might be others out there aren't enjoying it. Aren't learning the game as quickly as we do. Maybe they're stuck, maybe they're struggling? How difficult would it be on the easiest (or even easier) setting for the game to adjust, even a little. It's not enough to say 'This isn't a game which coddles it's users' for if that were the case then shirley, there wouldn't be a 'first bite' option at all and instead the player would be dumped into normal difficulty right away. I don't understand this. Sorry Edit: I just re-read that and I get what you mean. Yeah, true. It's not a competition though. We can all learn at our own pace when we're playing SP.
  6. Ok, just so we're clear. I'm not speaking about the rate or breadth of level 1 or level 2. I'm talking about the game adjusting it's difficulty on the easiest setting or even this being an entirely new sub-difficulty for the game although I do agree with Blasted_Taco that first bite is where the player learns the game. Just try and appreciate the harder difficulties you used to face or likely less tasking than the easiest difficult right now.
  7. Lifting the ladder is something I hadn't considered. It's a good idea but I think it'd be limited to the strong because you'd not only have to lift it up you'd also have to lift it through the window. That would mean supporting it horizontally too. I think that'd be quite difficult. I suppose if the ladder was aluminium then it might be different but even then I think it'd still be quite difficult. And that doesn't even account for the width of the ladder and the window respectively. I like your thinking though.
  8. I was just reading about a bloke on the PZ subreddit that was having difficult as a beginner. He had enquired as to what else he could do to make the game easier. See it strikes me that many of us have spent many hours in PZ dying repeatedly and learning the various crafting recipes and making their mistakes in a less aggressive PZ environment. That's because PZ is a lot more difficult now than it's ever been and don't for goodness sake, think that this is a complaint because it isn't. Now that the difficulty has jumped it's less jarring for those with experience and to new players it's a big jump when they first join. Not to all but to some. That's when I started thinking about the A.I director (governor) that's in the pipeline and I thought, wouldn't it be good if the game could look at your previous attempts and make changes to your starting settings or adjust them in-game depending on the success you are or are not having. There is two main reasons why I think this might be useful. 1. For new players, if they learn quickly they don't need to restart the game. 2. If the player is struggling the game could reduce the difficulty. To explain how this might work, here are some examples. These are just examples of how it could be done: Scenario #1 A player starts a game and picks up the basics very quickly. He crafts many things but kills very few zombies due to the low population in the game. However that small amount of Z's that the player killed was over 80% of the Z's from his cell and the surrounding cells. In that situation it's clear the player has hit the ground running. If he has enabled the predictive difficulty it could (upon loading the game or on the fly) up the spawn rate of Z's or drop item spawn from abundant to common. (Doesn't PZ decide spawn rate when the player searches a container?) Scenario #2 A player purchases and downloads the game. The put it on 'first bite' and play five games in quick succession. Those five games in two hours all resulted in him dying in increasingly horrific ways. The game reviews what items have been looted, crafted and zombies killed, realizes the player is hopeless. It does a quick check to make sure his name isn't Strider and then when the player starts a new game it increases the spawn rate for items/food/medicine (as appropriate) and decreases the Z count at start with a gradual increase for spawn to slowly break the player in. I'd like to stress this is something that would need to be enabled by the player. If the players first games are all very short the game might offer this to them the next time they start. That or exclusive to the easiest setting of the game so as not to irritate the experienced players. For players who are struggling I could see it being very useful. I appreciate that some might see this as hand-holding but if a player joins and becomes immediately frustrated and never comes back then who does that help? I understand that this might be good for the player but not represent a worthwhile investment when weighed against the amount of time it took to code it and if that's the case, no problems. As with all my suggestions, I'm just throwing ideas around. Don't be scared. If you don't like my ideas please do feel free to complain. You can find the complaints forms on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard'.[1] [1] Free air-donught for getting the reference.
  9. Actually. Wood that is wet would be extremely difficult to chop too. Now that wouldn't apply to cutting down trees (as far as I can tell) but it might effect the players ability to saw them into planks. Perhaps someone with actual experience of woodwork might have a better idea.
  10. It seems to me on higher difficulties there are two ways to go about your day. 1. Put a sheet rope on a house and destroy the stairs 2. Live in the woods. Sheet Ropes TIS are evil. I'm evil (when it comes to thinking of ideas) and it occurred to me that sheet ropes are fantastic method to escape a house when it's on fire but they're certainly not a great thing to rely upon long term. I mean think about it logically. You tie some bedsheets together or worse, jumpers or pants and you use that to scale two stories (or more!) to your house every day and down every morning. Now let's assume for a moment that you've been incredibly careful tying the knots and the cloth is good quality that still wouldn't account for weather and general wear and tear from use. Example: Like I say, I'm a little bit evil. It would be fantastic to catch a new player out. A player who has spent weeks doing work on his safe-house but didn't have the presence of mind to put more than one sheet rope from his safe house. One day he starts scaling down his sheet rope and it detaches/breaks and the player sprains his ankle or worse a fracture or a break. Worse of all, now the player has no method of getting back to their safe house so now they have a fractured leg and no safe house and they probably left most of what they consider important upstairs. I know I would. The exception might be if you actually used a rope instead of a sheet rope but even then weather will play it's part. The rope will fray and eventually break depending on the amount of traffic it sees. That isn't conjecture, the sheet rope/rope will break. It's a case of when, not if. The heavier the weather, the greater the extremes between hot and cold would both play a large part. Which brings me to... Free standing ladders So the idea here is that you either find or construct a ladder. A found ladder would be unlikely to break but it would be a liability if zombies were about. It's not a stretch of the imagination to speculate that a zombie could knock this ladder over. This too would make for a very interesting game mechanic. It's not unrealistic to imagine that a wooden ladder could be constructed. Again it's safety could be dependant upon the carpenter who built it. Build a ladder at level zero and it'll be a rickety piece of crap and more likely to kill you than help you but at level 10 it'll hold firm in an earthquake. Attached Ladders There should be an option to attach the ladder to the wall. Applying the aforementioned about constructed ladders it would seem sensible to take a constructed ladder and then nail it to the wall so it's secure. I would imagine that would require some alteration so it's stands out from the wall a little otherwise your hands and feet would not be able to get purchase on the ladder. I appreciate that ladders *must* have been discussed before so just remember I don't check to see what's been discussed because I feel that in the process of writing this I'm bound to have touched upon something someone else has missed. And as ever, I'm just throwing around ideas. If you don't like the idea then hit me in the stomach please, not in the face. That's where the magic happens. Note: For that picture I googled 'man falling from sheet rope' and that was the first image I found. I censored it just in case someone gets offended. I know, nobody ever gets offended on the internet but I thought I'd play it safe.
  11. Two parts to this suggestion: 1. Wet wood (stop that giggling at the back!) 2. Campfire proficiency 1. Wet wood. So as I'm sure you all know. It's a bad idea to set wood on fire when it's wet. It makes a huge ploom of grey smoke that can be seen for miles and would invariably attract the Z's. I'd like to see this reflected in the game. Keep wood stored in a dry place. If you don't it would be extremely difficult to light with a notched plank and stick and would be awkward to light otherwise unless you had some sort of primer like lighter fluid. Even if you did light it the consequences as I touched on above could be disastrous. Which leads me to number two. 2. Campfire proficiency With the aforementioned in mind you could create a basic tiered system or perhaps tag it to the carpentry skill or hiking/scout perk (to simplify matters) You could have a couple of levels of fire. You could have the basic fire but you could also have a 'steath fire' (not my nomenclature) something like this: I can image this being touched on before. I'm sorry, I have scoured the forum so I apologise if I've trampled on anyone's toes. I've not done it on purpose and I'm glad to give you the credit you might deserve. As ever, I'm just spitting ideas, if you don't like them, don't hurt me, I'm only little.
  12. Now before anyone jumps in and tells me that TIS have added the possibility of rescue to the 'YOU SHALL NOT PASS' list, yeah, I know about this. Right, now that that's out of the way. The idea in brief Vehicles / bases placed into the game with soldiers / armed civilians guarding them implying rescue which are there to make the player think they're going to be rescued but are in fact traps. The idea de-briefed In zombie books and film there are often set-pieces where the protagonist thinks they've reached a safe house / bunker / army base / army humvee / army helicopter only to find that the zombies found it first and they likes themselves some tasty brains. So here is an example scenario. * A player hears a radio broadcast * The broadcast offers the player sanctuary, food, medicine etc * The broadcast tells them where the base is * When the player gets there rests in the base for (x amount of days) this triggers a mini (or perhaps not so mini hoard of zombies and if the player isn't quick to think and react they get trapped and killed. You could put something in the base as an incentive for the player to find them. MRE's, medicine, weapons in small quantities because the players are (sooner or later) going to twig that these are all traps. One last point. I would imagine this would have to be post-NPC development as I would think to make this believable you'd need to have NPC's there. I would think. As ever, just throwing ideas around so if you want to leave feedback feel free to do so just be gentle, k?
  13. This is a very well laid our and useful guide, thanks. Haha. TIS are fucking evil.
  14. To be clear. My point was not to have the option to move time forward more quickly. My hope is that it's seen that spending too much time resting is time where your character is doing nothing. It might be accurate since laziness is an evolutionary advantage (conserve energy) but it doesn't make for engaging gameplay. Put simply, resting is a good solution to the tired problem but care should be taken so this mechanic is not over used unless it could be spiced up somehow. <snip> I really like this idea but I worry as it sounds like a lot of work. On it's own merits though it seems like a good idea and certainly addresses my other point about how resting would otherwise be boring. Oh I dunno. I learnt little titbits about say, the wonders of the world from Civilization through the years That said, I can't think of too many games that I found educational.
  15. Contextually, eating while resting is perfectly fine. I see no reason why other things couldn't be tagged onto the things you can do while resting. My concern would be that you spend too much time resting. If that happens then you'd spend most of your time with your finger on the speed time button. I understand. It was just an idea and I throw them out there. I don't think all of my ideas are great but if I fire enough off eventually some of them resonate with the peoples in this forum. I know then that the idea is a good one. It begs the question, what else could be done automatically whilst resting that isn't happening now. * Automatically changing a bandage? * Checking a weapon for wear and tear or just cleaning it so the mechanism is clear? I'm sure there are other things a player could be doing which aren't intensive. Sort of sit in bed and chill odd jobs. I can't think of any others at the moment but I'm sure there are a few things the player could be doing.
  16. Alright, I know, this goes against what PZ is trying to accomplish but stay with me on this. The idea is that the game records actions you take and records the time until your death and then uploads it to a central server. I'd love to see this in all areas of the game, full fat, challenges everywhere but it'd especially suit the 'Winter is coming' and 'The Mall' (I forget it's name) challenges. Advantages: * People like to compete It's a good way to stress-test the game. I've found game changing bugs but instead of exploiting them I've reported them. This would be a good way to highlight them * Perspective and do we really need a hero? It gives new players an idea of how difficult the game can actually be. It also allows us to have our very own zombie hero. If someone survives on insane Z count with sprinters for a week or two without hiding in the cupboard like a coward then I think that deserves recognition. P.S I never did that. *whistles* I don't think this should be serious. I think it should be a bit of fun and entirely optional, in fact I think the player should go out of his way much like with the beta to be part of this so players can keep their experience private as I have done so many times. Like I say, you should keep it silly. A good example would be to copy the graveyard of games like Cannon Fodder where you'd have "Johhny" "Wilco" "Tiptop" "Eddie" "Bowler" etc scattered over a hill. You could have such a graphic and even share it on the website. You could have a vanilla scoreboard which has no mods loaded and you could have scoreboard with a pre-determined set mods. I wouldn't create one with no restrictions though as that we skewer the results. As always, just a thought, don't hurt me, k?
  17. I just loaded up PZ before and read a book so my bloke wouldn't be unhappy. I've had the idea of using an EvE Online method of learning new methods from books. An example: The player is level 0 in carpentry. The player picks up and reads a beginners guide to carpentry. The player spends the rest of the day farming. The player rests in a chair from exertion or goes to sleep[1][2] and in this time they learn more of the book. You could even set it so the player stars reading a book. If you save and quit the player keeps learning. This could be done by simply equating real time to game time. So for 10 hours you've been out at work the player has spent 10 hours learning a book. You come home and the player has a huge multiplier to carpentry. [1] If the player slept for say 8 hours you could designate 1 or two of those ours were spent reading. [2] You could even have the learning rate increased or decreased based on luminosity. Does the player have a candle, no, 20% the normal learning rate. Understand, this is not how I think it should be. I, as ever am just throwing ideas around with recklessness. I don't care where my ideas fly or if one should happen to land in some girls banana daiquiri. Don't hurt me, k?
  18. So I've been using the Horizon clock. It's a mod guaranteed on my list of mods now. I like that I can't say exactly what the time is. It feels more immersive. I'd like to see this become part of the game but used intelligently. This is an example of how I think it could be used. The game could make a 'dice roll' at the start of the game to decide the following: 1. You start the game with a basic battery powered watch (44%) 2. You start with a mobile phone (44%) 3. You don't start with either of them (10%) 4. You start with a kinetic self powering watch (2%) Now, during the game the battery will run out and most of the watches I've owned required a special tool to open them and replace the battery and so in PZ you're unlikely to find that. The same goes for the mobile phone. Eventually the power will go out and they'll be useless too. When that happens the clock could revert to the moon/sun Horizon clock. Anyway, just a thought. Edit: Apologies as I forgot to mention one of the more important aspects of this idea which is cloud cover, something which PZ have already implemented. Now at the moment the cloud cover prevents the moonlight and makes the game extremely dangerous at night. Horizon clock would make this more dangerous as they day would already be dark it would be easier for night to 'sneak up on you' and would give the time piece extra importance. Thanks for the positive comments, btw.
  19. That's fine just remember my original point wasn't about camp fires per se. My real point was that some crafting options should be crammed down the players throat as those crafting options should already be known to the player. That's why I picked the potato on a stick example. The camp fire example was more for comparison.
  20. That's an interesting point. If you made a poorly constructed fire it could potentially set fire to the surroundings. I'm not from Kentucky so I suppose it would take someone from around there to say. If it has really hot periods then in wooded areas they'd have forest fires. I don't remember hearing about them but then I'm not dialled into American news.
  21. Well a couple of points I'd like to make. Sticks + Lighter do make a campfire just not a very long one. My point being that there needs to be real fuel behind it if it's going to last, planks, logs or coal realistically. Then there is using the tinder then thicker wood to help the fire catch . Now I agree, with a lighter that's something that most people would understand pretty quickly if not know already however I was talking about using a notched plank, tinder and a stick. This method requires a little more knowledge, the notched plank has to allow for the tinder to breathe. This is something I either didn't remember or learnt recently. I'm not sure I consider such knowledge in today's age to be prevalent.
  22. TL:DR - In the simplest of terms I'd love to see simple things available from the start (based on your characters previous experience) and the rest should be hidden from sight until unlocked by a book or another player. It's important that obvious things be highlighted and easy to find for the character so they can be created/cooked easily. The purpose of this thread is to address a lack of obviousness. I am trying to bring attention to something which irks me and may irk others too. I'm talking about the inability to do very simple things because of the restrictive nature of crafting and cooking. I'm going to use two examples to try and better explain what I mean. 1. Campfire 2. Cooking a baked potato Campfire. Now making a campfire would certainly not be obvious to everyone. I can understand why the crafting of a campfire would be hidden until it was laid out to you in a book. That to me feels natural. If a player wanted this ability at the game start there should be something they could select to reflect their own personal knowledge. If you have the materials in your inventory, a notched plank, a sturdy stick and some tinder and fuel you're set. This doesn't reflect any knowledge you'd have needed to gain in the first place to start it properly. 2. Potato! I was recently playing a save where I tried to forage at the log cabin (Mul) on insane Z count. The idea was to find out of the Z's eventually found their way to me. I wanted an insane Z count to really imprint on myself the danger of going back into town. It had to feel like almost certain death. In that regard Indie Stone, good job! Because of this I understandably had very little time in the city to collect many things but I did manage to secure a trowel and some potato seeds. Foraging went well and so did the horticulture. I grew some tatties but because I didn't have a pan or bowl I couldn't cook the potato. It should've been possible to forage for a tree branch and simply cook the potato over an open fire. Let me be clear. I'm not suggesting this be added as a recipe. It should be but that's not the point of my post at all. What I'm saying is, there should be a list of things which should be obvious to the player as making a cup of tea. I'd love to see baking a potato on a branch within crafting menu under cooking like Hydrocraft but unlike the campfire it should be nice and clear for the beginner (and not so beginner *cough*) players to find. L
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