TrailerParkThor

Definitely agree it would be much more immersive and accessible. Especially with all the new skills coming in B42 potentially more than doubling the number of skills we currently have. It would be satisfying for both noobs and veteran players. New players would be able to discover new game systems naturally as they encounter them in the world. Veteran players would get everything streamlined. They would be able to see their character progress through the skills slowly increasing in both level and quantity. Would be great for RP too.

I imagine some sort of guided "Tutorial Campaign" will be included when Story Mode is reimplemented.

@ThiagoPerfect idea! If we built it, would make sense to be sterile and watertight!

I want to suggest a timekeeping update that would actually fit in pretty perfectly with Build 42, 44, or 46. My main suggestion revolves around watches and clocks, however there are some other ideas I've had that could fit into the picture pretty well. Starting off, I would love to see different sized batteries, working clock tiles, and clockwork winding. In real life, there are dozens of different types of batteries that are not at all interchangeable. Obviously, we don't need to add every different type of battery in existence into Project Zomboid, but some variation would be fun and engaging. I imagine there would be 3 types: Small Battery, Battery, and Large Battery. These batteries would be representative of button cell batteries, AAs/AAAs, and D or C batteries respectively. These batteries would be used for various different electrical devices. Radios and flashlights, for example, would need Large Batteries. While things like watches and other small devices would take Small Batteries. Right now, I'm sure you're saying, "But watches don't need power!" If this update were to be implemented, it would be awesome for digital watches to actually have charge that will run out eventually. This would actually give a reason to use wristwatches, as they would be 'recharged' a different way. Wristwatches could simulate actual clockwork inside, which would require regular winding to keep it from becoming inaccurate over time. It would just be a small timed action likely only needed every week or so; and since there are no deadlines in PZ, I doubt anyone will be too upset having their watch off by an hour or so anyways. This would also open the door to adding in Antique Pocketwatches as a rare collectible, that would need to be manually rewound every day. As for my final suggestion here, I would love to see functional clock tiles in the game. I know the game's engine doesn't allow the tiles to update in a way that would be able to portray the time. We should at least be able to select an option to check the time in case we don't have a watch on hand, though. There are also some fun little side suggestions I've had related to this topic I figured I'd throw out there. For wilderness-oriented survivors, a sundial. Easily crafted with some planks and a saw after reading a magazine that teaches the recipe. This could function just like the aforementioned working clocks, where it would be an option that would give you the time of day. However, this would only give the time in 15 minute increments, rather than down to the minute. These would be especially useful if batteries were added as a requirement to watches someday. I also think a functional calendar would be a useful addition to the game. It would be a wall decor tile that could be used to open up a calendar UI that would function a lot like the map UI. This UI would have 12 pages, one for each month. Perhaps there could even be different calendar variants i.e. Pinup Girls, The Beauty of Nature, or Firefighters of the Month. I picture that you could add notes and symbols just like you can with maps, allowing players to set goal deadlines or plan trips, etc. This would also allow MP groups to communicate timelines to eachother very effectively.

The devs already plan to add faction management and everything that entails. I don't think you'll be able to draw on a paper map, but you'll definitely be able to give them basic orders and commands and set battlestations I'm sure.

I agree with everything except for the the Silo holding water/gas. They were not designed to be watertight, and definitely are not clean. Your gas would spill out/spoil very quickly, and your water would be disgusting. I think they will be used to store grains en masse after the Farming Overhaul. I also disagree with the instruments. I think if we want to make them functional, then we need to go all in. Give the player a Guitar and Piano Skill and level it up to play better sounding music a la The Sims. It should lower unhappiness and stress to everyone who can hear if the musician is a high enough level. The player doing the action should also lower boredom, and anyone dancing (if added) also lowers boredom.

I agree with your initial complaints, but as others have stated: Early Access and all that. Many, many inconsistent and outdated features/mechanics are still in the game from pre-B41 (and even pre-B39) era of the game. Zombie tracking, spawning, and thumping mechanics are 3 major ones for sure. However, we really don't know what is and isn't intended behavior, and how the devs envision their behavior in the finalized game release. Thumping down windows and doors definitely are intended features, we can assume that much. However, what about walls? Zeds can eventually break down player-made walls, even if they are a Level 10 Carpenter or Metalworker. Why can't they break down the 20+ year old walls of a trailer home? How can they even break down a 10 foot tall welded metal wall without dozens of bodies? Realistically, walls need an upgrade first. They need to be categorized into Wooden, Metal, and Stone. All wooden walls should be breakable by zeds through thumping, and PCs through Sledgehammer, Axe, Saw, or even kicking the supports out (however this will take a lot of energy and have potential for injuries). Metal walls should only be destructible to PCs through the Sledge, and should have an insane amount of HP against zeds. Nigh indestructible levels. Stone walls (ie brick, concrete, etc) should be totally indestructible. Neither zombies, nor players should be able to break through a solid concrete wall. The only exception being a jackhammer or power saw if they were ever added. Under this system, some flimsy wooden walls should come crashing down if a horde spots you, but you should be completely safe if you are in strong brick house. This would already be a major update for zombie AI, and it would also just be amazing for MP and future NPCs in terms of faction warfare. In terms of tracking and spawning features, we don't really know what to expect. I definitely feel the same as you, that it's too RNG heavy and cheeseable. However, it's an extremely difficult balance to strike. No new zombie spawns at all, and you risk the player completely clearing out the map. Have spawns at all, and it may seem unearned when a zombie kills you. Personally, I think that new zombies should spawn at the edge of the map and move inwards. Heavily at the highways and urban edges of the map, and sparsely in the wooded edges. Newly spawned zombies would start moving down the highways until they met up with more zeds and formed a group, or had tracking set off by a survivor. This way, you can have both realism and new zombies spawning in. Maybe they could even have a desired zombie population, so the more you kill the more respawn at the edge of the map. This would allow players to clear out areas to build bases, while still allowing the world to be zombie infested. However, this setting could still be customized in sandbox settings in case you really do want to be able to clear out the map. I like the concept behind Sleeping Events, but not the execution. I think they should be partially RNG, and partially based on sleeping conditions. Are you in a hotspot on the zombie heat map? Are you sleeping in an open, echo-filled room; or a small closet deep inside a mansion? Are you stressed and having nightmares? Are you sick and coughing/sneezing? Are you or your house covered in blood? Is there a radio, TV, or other loud electrical noise nearby? Are there a lot of dead bodies and/or zombies nearby? Are there any broken/open windows/doors? All of these factors could be considered while running the check to do a Sleeping Event or not. If I am in the middle of the woods, perfectly clean and healthy, surrounded by walls on all sides with no sound emanating from my base... there is no possible way a horde shows up at my doorstep. If I have a violent nightmare while sleeping in a Louisville warehouse, it probably makes sense that a bunch of zombies are already trying to get into my shelter. Finally, I think that it should only spawn a horde outside as you wake up. You should have ample amount of time to either get prepared for a last stand, or bug out with as much as you can grab. You shouldn't already have a zombie in your room by the time you wake up (unless you had a broken window or something). You would be woken up by the sounds of a dozen people walking around your house, let alone a dozen moaning undead trying to get in! Tracking is a topic I won't really try to tackle here, since it's way more of a practical code situation than one of realistic behavior. However, I will say that something needs to change. Sandbox settings of Cognition/Memory barely affect their lethality and behavior. We need much more in-depth and nuanced tracking/pathfinding, as well as the ability to control it better in the sandbox settings.

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@Papa Juliet Whiskeythat's why I said it basically has no effect. The fact that a 90 pound weakling can lift 2 fridges, a microwave, a sledgehammer, 8 giant water bottles, andd 10 boxes of nails; all while carrying a 50 lb bag full of canned goods in one hand and swinging a knife in the other is ridiculous to begin with. The fact that they can do that while only moving a little slower and getting tired quicker is just insanity. It's always been one of the biggest immersion breakers in the game for me. Obviously, inventory needs to be gameified a bit. So I understand why the PC needs to be able to magically carry a bunch of stuff while not holding it in their hands (I've played with Realistic Inventory and Bag Only mods... Fun, but definitely not for casual gamers). However, if they are going to have a realistic Encumberance system, why not make it function realistically. Carrying a Heavy Load should make the PC much slower than currently, cause much more damage than currently, potentially drop random items on the ground, and put the PC at risk of falling and/or breaking a bone. Obviously, it would scale up as you go higher. That way a Slightly Heavy Load might only cause you some pain, while an Extremely Heavy Load might just break your back right then and there. To balance this out, maybe carrying Heavy Loads could also increase strength, and give you slightly more Carry Weight over time.

Definitely is this, but I agree it should be handled better. There are a lot of holdovers from the primitive stages of the game: Overencumberance basically having no effect, certain food items giving too much/too little hunger/unhappiness, pills having no effect unless taking dozens, farming being too easy, being able to remove bullets/sew up wounds with no first aid, cooking/crafting complex recipes with no skill, being able to stay awake indefinitely, etc etc. It was all just because during the bare bones era of the game, it was more of a grimdark survival action game rather than the realistic zombie survival life sim it's finally shaping up to be. Devs have announced a Crafting Overhaul, Cooking Overhaul, Farming Overhaul, Health Overhaul, and Psychology Overhaul are all somewhere on the horizon. My guess is that they are just waiting til they do those to rework those features. Build 42 for cooking and crafting. Build 43 for farming and cooking again. Health and Psychology will probably arrive in Build 44 as a precursor to the human NPCs arriving in B45. Either way, I would expect a Psychology Overhaul around 2024 during B44/45. Hopefully we will see Boredom get reworked to be more realistic. As boredom definitely is a real-world issue even in survival situations. However, while they can correlate being bored doesn't equal a cause of depression. Since Boredom is only be caused by sitting around doing nothing, it really should only cause decrease in mental faculties/physical strength (by way of slight xp loss in certain skills), increase Tiredness, increase Hunger, decrease metabolic rate, and increase Unhappiness to a certain level (definitely not Depressed LOL). That way, if you spend all day indoors doing nothing, you will just become a fat, weak, dull loser that sleeps all day. It would definitely be a fun strat with certain builds, but overall would not be ideal. So it still works to motivate the PC out of the house and into action, without making them suicidally depressed after reading a book for a few hours. All while being more engaging, fair, and realistic

Seems like the PERFECT time to be honest. Personally I agree with @Magic Mark's idea for splitting up the erosion between building decay and natural growth. But the devs should take it even further. Since the new Foraging system has released, the map has already been divided into perfect different biome types for this type of mechanic upgrade. We have Streets/Parking, Town, Trailer Park, Farm, Farmland, Grasslands, Forest, and Deep Forest. Each of these zones is perfectly suited to define their own specific level of Erosion. Obviously Deep Forests would have the fastest rate of both building decay and natural growth, and Streets/Parking should have the least. Everything in between should progressively sit further along that scale. So Farms and Farmland should be sitting at average Erosion rates, with Farmland being taken over a little faster. This alone would make for a great change, as you would be able to see nature slowly reclaim everything. First with the rural settlements, then the small towns, and finally even Louisville would start to get overtaken by nature once more. However, I think the final little cherry on top here would be dynamic biomes. If my friends and I go into a forest and chop the whole thing down, it shouldn't just pop back up overnight as if it is still a Deep Forest. I should be able to terraform a Deep Forest into a Forest and finally into a Grassland. But let's not stop there, if I plant crops in that field I just cleared, it should become Farmland. Once I build something on top of it, a Farm. Once we have a small village built, it could be categorized under a Trailer Park. Not that it would ever happen, but theoretically, I should be able to spawn in a Deep Forest and eventually turn it into a Town. Street/Parking should probably remain unattainable unless devs plan to add paving roads to the game one day. Conversely, cells can grow to the point of changing biomes over time. IE a Trailer Park eventually becoming a Deep Forest when buildings decay. This 'Dynamic Biome Erosion' system could be based on the number of plants and buildings in a cell, as well as the type of cells surrounding it. Obviously I'm not a bigtime programmer, so I don't know the logistics of something like this, but I imagine it could work similarly to the Desired Zombie Population. Each cell would have a desired number or trees/plants, as well as a max cap on them (I assume their already is a max cap in place). The simulation will attempt to grow those trees wherever and however it can. Each biome will have progressively lower rates of growth descending from Deep Forest to Streets/Parking. These rates are bolstered or hampered by the neighboring cells. For example, Lickskillet may be an extremely rural settlement, but it it surrounded by Farms and Farmland for miles. So even though initial Erosion will happen quickly, it will take a long time for the forest to actually overtake it. Meanwhile a place like Rosewood, which isn't only bordered by Farmland, but a lot of Deep Forest as well, may actually get overtaken by Deep Forest sooner. This way, if I go into a Deep Forest and clear it out, it will be subject to extremely fast Erosion, and require constant maintenance unless I go out and clear the surrounding cells as well. The further I clear, the longer I have before nature should start creeping in again. Buildings/tiles can be considered the opposite of plants. The more buildings and manmade tiles in a cell (and it's neighbors), the lower the growthrate and max cap of plants will be. In Downtown Louisville, for example, there should realistically be no major plant growth until the buildings really start to decay. Buildings could be seen in the code as a percentage integrity value. Over time, they will decay little by little at a steady rate. Their decay rate, similarly to plant growthrate, could be determined by the amount of plants in a cell, as well as the neighboring cell types. Realistically, a cabin in the woods should only last for a few years without any human interaction before they would completely disappear. As buildings decay and pass certain thresholds, they could roll checks to see if a collapse of some kind happens. Maybe below 75% integrity, they roll a 5% chance. Below 50% is a 25% chance. Below 33% is 50%, etc, etc. If the roll succeeds, portions of the building collapse. This could even lead to chain reactions where the building starts to collapse and ends up completely levelled. Regardless, certain tiles would be destroyed, leaving behind trash, rubble, and maybe a few usable materials. This brings a whole new level of danger to exploring years-old buildings whose bones are starting to fail. When a building completely collapses (at least 95%), it is removed from the list of buildings and the growthrate/maxcap for plants goes up. Overtime, you should start to find forests full of ruin and scrap where towns used to be. Add all this with an upgrade to the level and visual scale of Erosion overall, and that's an incredible update that fundamentally changes the atmosphere and gameplay loop of PZ, while also increasing player agency and choice within the game world. Hell, even just updating it so tiles themselves have varying stages of decay would be amazing. It's always weird going into a rotting house and finding perfectly clean tubs and counters LOL. But seriously, imagine a server 5 years on, where the last remaining ruins of the small towns are hidden under the canopies of trees, where Louisville is a vast overgrown concrete jungle (LITERALLY!), and the only respite from the trees are small little gaps left by the cracked and crumbling highways, finally starting to become filled with weeds and shrubs as well.

Probably not. While I'm sure the devs could get a 128 player server functional, it probably wouldn't play very good. And while a 64 player server run by devs could be fun, there's way too many players to ever be able to get on regularly. So unless they dedicate thousands of dollars to hundreds of dedicated servers, I doubt it will ever happen. Search on the forums for people hosting large dedicated anarchy servers.

@LLcraigJexactly. @OffitManI do agree that making hygiene/bladder needs to the level of, say, the Sims would only serve to alienate a lot of casual players. Still, I think that entirely ignoring the fact that hygiene is a MAJOR part of long-term survival just isn't realistic. The fact that you need to be a literal Hemophobe in-game to even be bothered that you are soaking in the rotting gore of your neighbors is pretty silly. I imagine any of us would at least need relatively clean skin, hair, and clothes to even be content. You're telling me the guy who hasn't washed himself or changed his clothes in 10 months is happy with his life? In-game, his moodles are neutral so he must be right? I think the best way to go about this is to have a passive Hygiene meter that generally degrades over time. Slow when indoors, normal speed when outdoors, and quickly when doing manual labor/exercise. Perhaps -0.25, -1, and -3 every hour respectively. Bloodiness should also have a disproportionately high decrease in Hygiene compared to Dirtyness. In my mind, the bar would come in positive/negative moodles like Hunger. For example: +10 Hygiene (hard cap) = Immaculately Clean +5 Hygiene (soft cap) = Squeaky Clean 0 Hygiene = Clean -10 Hygiene = Musky -20 Hygiene = Dirty -30 Hygiene = Filthy -40 Hygiene = Disgusting This way if you wake up in the morning and clean yourself to Squeaky Clean level, you will have about 4 days until you are Dirty if you mostly spend it indoors. If you just wash yourself twice a week, you should be fine. Even if you are on a hardcore workout regimen or are building a house by hand, you should only be getting down to Filthy by the end of each day. I would even consider they add a 'secret' moodle for when you and your clothes are both completely clean. This way, if you put in a little more work, you should be able to stay clean much longer than usual. Staying indoors, Immaculately clean should last 3 1/2 days before you become Musky. I also think that if the only negative effect that low Hygiene brings is an Unhappiness debuff, it will be pretty balanced. May even be more balanced towards ignoring it, but I think that's for the best. Maybe like this: Immaculately Clean = -20% Unhappiness Gain Squeaky Clean = -10% Unhappiness Gain Clean = 0% Unhappiness Gain Musky = +5% Unhappiness Gain Dirty = +10% Unhappiness Gain Filthy = +25% Unhappiness Gain Disgusting = +50% Unhappiness Gain So there is a benefit to keeping yourself and your clothes clean if you'd like to do so, but ultimately it isn't that big of a deal. Even at pretty high rates of Hygiene loss, most players would only need to wash something once a day to avoid the debuff. The debuff is also not very debilitating, but would be a minor annoyance. Washing once or twice a week should be fine for most people. Plus, if devs added other ways to increase Hygiene, it could be very fun and easy to maintain. Like I listed earlier, they could include all of these actions: If cutting your hair/beard or washing your weapons were included, I think most players would be able to satisfy the need's requirements without changing their playstyle much. Honestly, though, if needing to take a shower and wear clean clothes sometimes is too much of an ask for you, I don't even understand how you play this game. So much of PZ is mindless, monotonous survival tasks. Some of which you can't even FF through. If you click 'Wash Self' on a tub and FF, it would take you less than 5 seconds to do. How is that less boring and more time-consuming than reading a Skill Book or building a wall around your compound? I think bringing in Hygiene now would be perfect with the new anims. Imagine actually watching your character wash under the shower water or sit on the toilet and reading a book while taking a dump. This single thing could lay the groundwork for multiple new mechanics and systems. We know wild animals are coming. Can a hungry bear smell you more easily if you are Dirty? Zombies could even have senses of smell, being attracted to stinky PCs. Perhaps covering yourself with zombie guts could even make them ignore you. The Psychology/Health Overhaul that is somewhere on the horizon could definitely benefit from a foundational Hygiene system. Keeping yourself clean is a simple task you could take on to keep up mental health after all. And infections/diseases could be more easily caught when maintaining low Hygiene. All in all, I think a hygiene system is a good idea. I could take or leave the idea of functional toilets, as long as it isn't a requirement to actual use them. However, at that point we should just leave it to modders and not waste the dev's precious time anymore LOL

I second the idea of a general hygiene meter rather than a bladder/colon meter. Hygiene is a very important factor in long-term survival after all. Taking showers/baths, washing your hands/face, wearing clean clothes, brushing/flossing teeth, wearing deodorant/lotion/soap, using the toilet, brushing/cutting/dyeing hair, shaving/styling beard, and applying makeup could all have varying positive effects towards hygiene. That way, if all you want to do is the bare minimum of cleaning your body and clothes, you can do that. However, for players who want to RP, they can still use the restroom and have that be a way to keep their hygiene up.

Yeah the game really needs more of it's version of Simlish. It's Zombese if you will