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.

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.

Currently the whole skill system and recipes are all visible from the start of the game. This isn't particularly bad, but it could be interesting and perhaps less overwhelming for new people if at least some skills and recipies had to be discovered in the world either through reading materials are by doing them before they are listed anywhere at least on default settings. This could also be a way to reintroduce the blacksmithing trait that iirc was briefly going to be put in the game but removed after.

I agree, I will note that currently zombies don't technically "seek" player built structures its just the way the spawning / horde mechanics work that causes issues. Realistically the biggest danger is before everything has gone to hell. Loved ones turning, finding yourself in a crowd unarmed because you were in a train station or a sports game during the outbreak. Not understanding what a zombie is and getting bit, etc.
 
Once you have made it past the first few weeks of everything you are realistically pretty safe because you have a massive advantage. Death comes when you're so exhausted you collapse and get caught, or so weak from hunger you cant fight back. Or you get sick from drinking non purified water or food. A regular person in good shape can take on zombies without issue, but thats not why surviving would be difficult.
 
It comes back to the issue of it being a video game, people expect to fight huge hordes of zombies in a zombie game. Even when it does not make sense. There are way more zombies than the population of the areas we find ourselves in. Why/how are there groups of zombies all over the roads and highways when there are barely any cars? where did the cars go? Why are there hundreds of zombies filling up train depots and warehouses, abandoned houses, park picnic areas, rural farms? It doesnt make sense.
 
Instead I think the way forward is to add more threats so the zombies can be dialed back. Once animals are added then we can have dangerous animals, bears, wolves, stray dogs, coyotes, foxes (not too dangerous but I wouldn't want to fight one unarmed). Then there does not have to be 150 zombies in some remote location because you have these new threats. It plays into risk vs reward because you can hunt these animals, but good luck trying to take down a bear without a gun. Risk is firing a gun to kill an animal and drawing a horde of zombies to your location or trying to take down an animal without a gun and risking loosing that fight. Kill the animal and you get a reward, meat hide, bones/teeth, etc as well as the building/area it was in. Imagine seeing 2 bears and some bear cubs have made a home inside a warehouse you needed to loot, it adds depth.
 
The second is better buildings, the devs have touched on adding masonry and brick walls and I wholeheartedly agree. I think metal and stone walls should be fireproof and virtually indestructible. Building a stone wall is really hard, it takes a long time and a lot of stone. Even a cinder brick wall has the same issue. IRL you can sit around and wait for mortar to dry or go buy more bricks when you break some. But its not easy to carry hundreds of bricks through the zombie infested ruins back to where you want to build your wall. This adds a cost and works with the class mechanics the devs are working on. A mason might not be as useful and well rounded as a carpenter but its worth having one in your colony because building brick walls is a massive undertaking with high rewards. Risk brick walls are expensive and time consuming, reward defense and fire resistance.
 
And that leads me to my third suggestion, fire should be a real game mechanic. Rework the way fire is currently so stone and metal things don't burn and then add more ways for fire to spread. It adds danger without needing zombies while also being able to draw zombies. Smoke alarm batteries last for years and some kinds of sprinkler systems use wax that melts in high temps to release water. If people are going to be building metal forges to blacksmith or welding things then fire should come into play. Have it be so that you need stone/metal structures to house forges or stoves or kilns. Because fires will start and destroy wooden structures and the loot within. Have it so that if you start a fire or use a torch to light up a dark apartment building you can start a fire, but instead of the fire melting the stone walls into burnt wood and ash like it currently does have it only burn the wooden furniture and carpets. Leave behind charred metal furniture and rubble. Imagine you come to a dark apartment building/hotel and craft a torch to light your way, but you see a bear/wolf inside and run away but you trip and drop your torch on the way out. The building becomes engulfed in flames setting off smoke alarms which draw zombies in while you try to escape. You return later and explore the now burnt out ruins and scavenge metal things and bits of loot that didn't get burnt up, maybe a maintenance closet with a metal door that was protected from the flames, maybe one area had sprinklers that put out some of the flames. Risk fire will destroy/downgrade loot and may draw zombies. Reward crafting/cooking/light/warmth.
 
Fourth would be reworking nutrition, the mood debuffs are crazy. I eat cold food on purpose and dont instantly become depressed. If you have been eating nothing but bugs and dandelions eating a cold pork chop or steak would be a godsend. Which side note devs please eat some dandelions IRL, they taste very bitter until you cook them so if anything is giving us a sadness moodle it should be that. I think the cooking system should be reworked by adding attributes to ingredients and then different recipes call for different things. So add a leafy green attribute to cabbage, lettuce, dandelions, mint, etc and then have a salad get bonuses for having a variety of leafy greens but also no negative for adding more. So instead of a pure lettuce salad that makes you depressed its simply a boring salad because you got your bonus for leafy greens but nothing further. On the other hand a sandwich with nothing but lettuce would make you sad because leafy greens have a threshold. For example a sandwich could have 1 bread 2 max leafy greens, unlimited meats, unlimited cheese, 4-5 max veggies. Adding some lettuce to your sandwich gives you leafy green bonus but adding over the limit will start to make it bad.
 
These food attributes can go further, have salty, sweet, sour, bitter, savory attributes where adding 1 bitter thing is fine but a bunch of bitter ingredients will ruin the dish. Meanwhile combos will give even better benefits (sweet + sour anyone?). It really adds depth because say your colony has been eating nothing but foraged bitter plants and they are really sad about it. Going and finding some vinegar or honey could allow the chef to remove the bitter debuff from the food by cooking it with the right ingredients. Now farmers will need to grow a variety of crops so they have a mix of attributes. It's also intuitive because this is how cooking works IRL. It promotes trade and could even be expanded with a fatigue system where if you consume enough of the same dish/attributes they have diminishing returns. Your first game meat and cabbage sandwich might taste amazing compared to all the bugs you had been eating but after eating nothing but sandwiches for 3 weeks a salad becomes much more appealing.
 
In conclusion make zombies more realistic but add other dangers that give players a reason to be in areas where there are zombies instead of just bringing zombies to the players artificially.

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.

- You can already make flame trap bottle bombs, but maybe we could mix pop and mint candy in a bottle to make a "Mentos Bomb" that causes no damage but makes a lot of sound.
- The addition of atlatls could be a really awesome idea if the throwable mechanics in the game were improved upon, slinsgshots could be cool also. However, I think that the ammo thing may be a little far-fetched. I know you can do that IRL, but the shrapnel would explode and probably injure you. Even small caliber rounds can do this.
- Stun grenades could be cool, but I can't really figure out a use for it outside of MP. Even there, why waste time throwing a nonlethal grenade when you could use a gun or anything to kill someone quicker. PZ is a permadeath game it's not COD, you wont respawn if you get killed. Smoke bombs are already in the game and are WAY more useful against both zeds and survivors alike.
- Fireworks should be a thing in general for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the game takes place days after 4th of July in rural Kentucky.
- LRAD speakes weren't even invented until the 21st century so that's an automatic no.
- This could be useful if we ever get an Alarm update.
 
I pretty much agree with all the trap ideas, but I can tell you right now we will never get Claymores added to the game. Hopefully extremely rare frag grenades someday, but even that is kinda 50/50. The log and gun door traps sound good though!

@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

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

Hi @TrailerParkThor
thanks for your point of view
about instruments, you are right, and you showed me that it will be too much effort for a low gain.
about the silo, Ive tought that: since you are builder of the silo, if its clean or not, is up to the survivor, and theoretically a level 9 on metalworking can handle holes and things like that to store gas/water (you cant store gas, and after that fill it with water, different silos for different proposes). Again, in my toughts, in a survivalist situation, you have to use what you have and improvise... exactly like sheets, its made to cover your bed, but you can use it as a rope... but if the survivor is trying to use another silo (already used before), found somewhere in the map, then i totally agree with you.
 

Twine should be craftable. Yes, would take skill (foraging? and/or a crafting recipe?) and time, but still.
 
This would require stripping long fibers from a suitable source, such as trees and other plants. Branches and logs would be a source, perhaps giving a random amount of fibers and destroying the resource in the process. Second, the fibers need to be soaked in water for several days ("retting"), and then dried (ie. kept in warm enough conditions). Lastly, they're twisted and tied together to make twine.
 
All in all, quite a bit of time and effort involved, but this would make a basic resource renewable in MP and make a wilderness base more viable.

Can also be done with plastic pop bottles and a knife. Not the greatest stuff, but reasonably strong, assuming it's not an old as bottle that's been sitting out in the sun for years.

+1 Yes please make Twine a craftable resource.
This video shows how to make cordage from plastic bags as well.
The video mentions 'Goran' was taught this by locals in the Caribbean; and that they also used coke labels. Plastic twine should be able to use for: Fishing, Making Rope, Twine alternative.
 

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.

Hello, I would like to suggest a new item for the game, the Energy drinks. This drink would grant the player -10 points to tiredenss and fatigue when drank, along side your common points for thirst. They can be found like any other drink, like in fridges, stores and kitchens. Really a simple concept for it. 
 
Thank you for reading.

OK, my suggestion is to finish what is already started...
 
https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Tiles/Miscellaneous and https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Items
 
Dr. Oids Arcade Machine // Kaboom! Arcade Machine // PAWS Pinball Machine - time to use that to relieve unhappiness, stress and boredom Oldies Jukebox - let the player choose and listen any of the game soundtrack (maybe extend it to the portable CD player?) + relieve boredom  Slurp Burp Soda Machine // Tabletop Soda Machine - charge it with orange soda (like fuel in a camp fire), maintain beverage cold with electricity (bonus happiness) Beer // Juice // Soda // etc - if its cold = bonus happiness Pool Table - relieve unhappiness, stress (and boredom if there is another player playing too.. to this, the best way is a non controlled game... like The Sims, you send the character to play and wait until the end for a random result). Empty Pallet - Can be crafted by the player and is used to store wood, logs, fertilizer, dirt/sand/gravel bags / bag of concrete / Bag of Plaster Powder (construction stuff) Blue Hospital Curtain - can be taken and used as a regular curtain in regular windows (but its tinted in blue) Weighing Scale - if you step over it, your weight will show above the scale (like the "bzzz" of any radio and disappears next) Western Piano // Guitars // any other musical instrument - if played regularly (like exercises), you will have temporarily added the traits "Keen Hearing" and "Dextrous" (while 95% or more of the regularity bar... it decreases over time, like exercises) + give tired status and relieve unhappiness, stress and boredom (starting at +50% regularity bar) Silo (tall) - can be crafted with metalworking level 9 to store a lot of fuel or water when its for water - can be the "middle piece" between the Rain Collector Barrel for plumbing a sink... the schematic could be: rain collector above the Silo, to fill it automatically... then sinks can be  plumbed to silo in the same floor or below with a range of 10) . If its for fuel, acts like a gas pump - you park the car near and use it, no electricity needed, manual pump) Money - As any other paper, can be used to start camp fire, barbecue, etc Bell - same as shouting, but with higher radius (but less than a car's honk) Corkscrew - needed to open exclusively wine bottles (like can opener for food cans) Crayons - can be used to mark things in map, drainable and can not be used as weapon Cube - same ideia of musical instruments, but only add Dextrous (temporarily) Perfumes - Can be used as fuel for camp fire Playing Cards // Dices - same as Pool Table, but in this case, impossible to play it solo - works only in MP Paperclip + HolePuncher - the ideia is the same of Notched Wooden Plank and stick, but to open house doors with moderate success rate, car doors with lower rates (but its possible). Notched Wooden Plank and stick - higher level in foraging, make it easier to start fire (if success to start fire +little XP on foraging) Stone - equipped in primary hand to be your first option of weapon when you have your bare hands, good to smash heads if you dont have decent boots Rubber + Wood Stick - craft a slingshot, very low damage, but can be used to train (XP at aiming) Video Game - it should be used to reduce boredom Onion - recipe to slice it and have onion rings (raw) Gravy - add as ingredient to pasta and etc

it always seems convenient that so many people that complain lengthily about things like this claim to be coders or game designers
 
 
the first complaint "zombies shouldn't be able to beat down doors its unrealistic, flesh doesn't beat wood" yeah thats true, flesh is a lot softer than wood. and zomboid definitely boasts about it's realism.. but if zombies couldn't break down doors, the game would be pretty damn boring and very easy
 
the core game is fun
 
and yeah, if you mod it and debug it you're stilling playing project zomboid.. it's not a "completely different game"
so if i went out and bought a classic chevy squarebody truck, cut out the rust on the body and replaced it, gave it a lift kit, and bigger tires and swapped out the diffs, and upgraded the sound system does that mean its a "completely different truck"?
 
nah man, it's still a classic X year chevy squarebody, just with some mods and upgrades. just like zomboid
 
don't play it if it causes you so much grief
 
 
i enjoy it tons

Who is crying bad mechanics are bad mechanics. 
Your excuse is a classic cop out. 
 
 

zeds attacking windows is fine.  between reflections  of light and movement and the possibility of curtains moving due to wind getting in somewhere, I think zombies triggering is fine.
 
doors are iffyier.  any door with a window (due to above reasonings) or that's open  (could move in the breeze and hinges could squeak) no problem, but a closed solid door with nothing making noise behind it  shouldn't attract zeds except once in a blue moon maybe when a roamer stumbles into one somehow and creates a feedback loop of noise that attracts others.

I will admit, zeds bashing doors for no reason does break immersion to a degree, as does pathing around tall chain link fences. I'm guessing the devs'll probably make those fences thumpable at some point. 
 
I don't know of they can be destroyed by zeds, but playing last night, I noticed I was able to deconstruct wooden shed walls. Maybe thumpable walls are coming? (Cannot disassemble other houses walls at the moment, and disassembling wooden walls could be from a mod, don't remember seeing anything on the dev blog)
 
Windows are little more believable, or doors with windows. Glass reflects light, after all, and in my mind, it's just a knuckle brain trying to get at his reflection.
 
Regardless, if they can't find ways to get to you, I imagine it would make for a bland playthrough.
 
It does bother me that once a zed starts paying attention to a door or window, the only way to get their attention is to walk right up to them. Horns, gunshots and sirens - no. Invading your space though? Why not?
 
Does '93 Kentucky have a stand your ground law or something?
 
Invariably, I have faith and hope that someday, zombie pathing will get some TLC down the road.

I agree that doors and windows break far too easy, windows even faster.
 
You never have this oh shit moment im surounded by zombies trying to get in because they break the windows very fast and doors last slightly longer :/

I agree its a really annoying mechanic zombies attacking your base for no apparent reason, I have been mentioning it for more then a year.
 
I remember a Dev replied one time saying something along the lines as,
"This isn't intentional behaviour - they are programmed just to attack destructible items as they randomly bump into it - the problem is zombies spawn around the player which causes a higher chance of them bumping into it.
 
This "Bumping into it" is what results in a chain reaction since the noise a zombie bumping makes attracts more zombies resulting in a domino effect.
 
-----
 
The solution I proposed at the time I believe was make various attack strengths of zombies
So Regular bumping not only does no damage - but after 4 - 5s they stop and wander off if they get no response.
 
So it still has the same "effect" of terror but not the annoying damage consequences. 
This also creates "counter-play" by shutting down all noise in the building to let the zombie "wander off" 

Not sure why you got no replies in 13 days but:
 
I never died from being surrounded by zombies while sleeping. Never needed to break stairs (though I agree it shouldn't be a thing). I agree that it seems stupid that zombies would randomly break house windows but not car windows - although I'm glad they don't or every single vehicle in the game would be a wreck.
 
I agree with most of your points though, and I think zombie AI should be polished. If you watch Retanaru's vid on how to lose zombies, it's clear that there's some magic bullshit going on and zombies should be fixed to be coherent.
 
Edit: there's a setting to allow or forbid zombies from destroying doors and windows randomly. The default Apocalypse settings forbid them, so if they do surround you, it's because you somehow drew them in. Maybe by switching the lights on? (watch Retanaru's vid on lights attracting zombies)

One of the main goals of this game seems to be a consistency of reality, but there are several things that clearly don't meet that goal.
Another complaint I have is that there's too much RNG. Too much RNG is bad game design (I am a game designer, having studied game design for over 10 years).
 
The first complaint I have (currently at 175.3 hours played) are things like zombies beating down doors, or randomly attacking doors or windows without hearing noise or seeing anything. This seems completely inconsistent. If zombies randomly attack things then they should attack everything from the walls of a house to cars to fences - everything. They should slam their bodies against brick walls until the organic material of the zombie fall apart. The zombies cannot feasibly have enough "sense" to understand in their zombified mental state that a door is easier to smash than a brick wall.
 
I could punch a solid door until I'd broken every single bone in both my hands, my wrists, my forearms, and my biceps and I'm not going to break that door down - not unless it's a poor quality door. And if a window is reinforced it should be fundamentally indestructible.
 
But a larger gripe I have is with zombies randomly attacking doors and windows. Again, if the mentality of these creatures is to destroy anything impeding their destinations, then there are a few contradictions here: Like I stated, one is that then the zombies should attack literally anything in their way, and 2, zombies shouldn't know any better so as to go around anything, and they do.
 
If a zombie knows it can smash a window or a door down and move through then it doesn't understand it can just move around the building, and if it doesn't understand that then literally anything you lead it to - a car, a wall, a light post, a tall fence, anything - should cause the zombie to not understand it can move around it, but zombies move around obstacles all the time.
 
Clearly you developers have coded it so that the zombies are making checks for "breakable" objects, causing a potential path where the AI can cause the zombies to stop their initial track so as to stop and attack these objects. This removes the realism as it's cherry-picked considering what you've coded as "breakable".
 
A hugely frustrating thing with this is that you can be sleeping only to have zombies beat the door to the room down in the middle of the night and surround you so that once your character wakes up they immediately die.
 
But this doesn't make any sense within the confines of the world. The zombies don't hear you - and if they do, that's inconsistent with your sneak mechanic being as it is, or with the multitude of things you can do in game that even make an audible sound that won't attract zombie attention.
 
And this is an issue with RNG because it's completely random if the game decides a hoard of zombies moved in the night and then beat the door down to the building you're sleeping in and surrounded you. The only sure-fire way to avoid this is to only sleep on the second floor of a building after destroying the stairs, which is very easily argued to be a form of an exploit and another deviation from reality.
 
You ever take apart stairs?
 
And why is it that zombie hordes can't smash your doors down to your first floor and destroy all your things? Or smash apart your cars? Well, because you're cherry-picking.
 
I'm completely fine with the permadeath nature of the game - but that nature must come at the hands of player mistakes, not RNG. What you're just going to do is ensure that the majority of your player base manipulates the game in some way to ensure they mitigate as much of that RNG as possible, which defeats the purpose of your own coded mechanics. Why code it for an explicit purpose if doing so is only going to motivate players to alter settings to negate it, or to use the debug mode to offset the poorly-managed mechanics?
 
And that's how you know when a mechanic is poor - when the fundamental player base "cheeses" them or out right disregards them/mitigates them by way of soft or hard exploitation, file editing, mods, and debug mode.
 
The GAME needs a foundational set of rules and those rules should be consistent. You're going to push away a huge swath of your players and potential players by being too stubborn about some of your core dynamics you're unwilling to change.
 
My recommendation is to be consistent in zombie behavior and always, always, always give players the tools necessary to alleviate RNG. If zombies can break down a door while your character is sleeping, the fix to that shouldn't be every player destroys their stairs or lives in the woods.
 
Alter the way zombies respawn. Every single zombie is a potential for perma-death, so there is no reason to make unrealistic spawn cycles. Make them realistic - give the player a REWARD for taking a huge risk. Risk vs. reward is a massive element in good game design. The player feeling as if they are completely safe because they spent 3 days clearing hordes of zombies around a gas station should ensure that the area IS in fact safe with no superficial "magical teleporting spawned zombies" suddenly appearing from thin air and killing them in their sleep.
 
The answer shouldn't be (and I'm sure you've heard this from many of your customers already) to sandbox the hell out of the game. Too much sandbox changes the fundamental dynamics of the GAME ITSELF, rendering it not the same game. It'd be like playing Chess with checkers pieces that move in ways you arbitrarily decided - that's fine and all, but you're no longer playing Chess.
 
So what game ARE we playing? Because once we've modded and debugged the hell out of the game, it's no longer Project Zomboid, but something completely different. It's like watching these streamers talk about surviving for 1,000 hours only to note that they're so heavily modded and likely file manipulating/debugging that they're likely full of crap.
 
The core game needs a core, and that core needs to be FUN to play or it shouldn't exist.
 
The problem with a mechanic like allowing zombies to smash a door down and surround you while sleeping is it takes 100% of the control (or even preparation) away from the player. The player has NO tools at their disposal to stop this short of an exploit (destroying stairs is an exploit).
 
You might as well just have the game make a check every time the player sleeps and if the check succeeds, just roll a game over screen and kill their character. That's how superficial that mechanic is.
 
And it also creates a complete inconsistency with multiplayer where there's no sleeping, creating a direct discrepancy in the game itself.

Good day survivors!
 
This is a pretty niche request and doesn't come up all that often early on in game, but I think an option to merge all of certain types of items that can combine together (think thread, duct tape, wire, etc.) would be nice. In many games you won't have all that many, and combining them one at a time is just a handful of clicks. At high level tailoring, however, you can end up with hundreds of 0.1 weight thread in a single day of zombie killing and clothes ripping. While a low weight individually you can end up encumbered rather quickly since higher level tailors can get new thread from most articles of clothing.
 
The problem comes down to a similar one that tailoring had before the "patch all" option which is that if you'd like to condense those threads down to a smaller amount of spools to save space you're clicking hundreds of times for in an game action that takes just a second. Three to four hundred individual spools of 0.1 thread can be 30+ weight, but condense down to 30-40 spools of thread that'll only weigh about 3-4 weight afterwards, but in real time you're spending many minutes to click through the menu hundreds of times.
 
Like I said, it's not a super common problem to deal with unless you have abundant loot and lots of items or high level tailoring where you can easily generate hundreds of items in a relatively short amount of time, but it would definitely make my arm feel better than trying to merge together all that thread. I did a batch of about 350 spools and decided not to do it again and just let a bunch of half spools of thread fill my shelves from now on.
 
My only other idea is to let thread ripped from some clothes automatically fill a spool that you have in your inventory. That would be far easier for a player but if there was any other technical issues with that then an option in the "add to" menu of an item like thread so a player can fast forward through combining them all would be nice, or at least save the hand pain of trying to click through a few hundred times for something trivial to save space.
 
Thanks for checking out my thread!
 

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