Preacher

Hello I'm a modder and I like to think of myself as very idealistic as well as different to most others. If you might not know me, you can remember me as that fellow who emailed you before about the stuff for loot respawns, at least at the time you did take the idea into account and talked about it. Well I've got something for you, not something to follow, but just some inspiration that might help you guys think of new ideas for your game. Watch the following video: http://www.primewire.ag/external.php?title=Naked+And+Marooned&url=aHR0cDovL2dvcmlsbGF2aWQuaW4vcHd1MWFueHhhaTgz&domain=Z29yaWxsYXZpZC5pbg==&loggedin=0 Try to take into account what he does and what he experiences, if you could even capture the tiniest fraction of what Edd does in your game, I'm sure it will be absolutely amazing. As for now, it is a wonderful game that most survival based games can't live up to - but I do believe PZ can be even better and not only capture survival in a suburban based situation, but in the forest. You have foraging and fishing, as well as fires, but hopefully by watching this you can add to the immersion and difficulty of surviving in the wild, as well as it's amazing bounty. Also this is a recommendation, but you should add things like hunting cabins or boxes to be found in the wild that would have supplies. Many, many, many times people have gone out into the middle of nowhere and found abandoned cabins or compounds with supplies, as well as occasionally weapons. I hope this was helpful - also other players, I don't need any feedback on this by the way. It's just for them to read and to consider themselves, not specifically an open discussion for 40+ people to argue about. Note: I sort of just watched Edd Stafford surviving and instantly started thinking about Project Zomboid and how amazing it would be to just run around with a hunting bow, killing buck and trapping animals as well as setting up wood shelters. Although you wont see it in the video, something to deal with humans should be human sized traps. Punji traps are probably the best bet and could be placeable. The Punji Trap(Because lets be honest, the only thing regular people are capable of in terms of trap making is sticking pointy sticks in a hole and hoping the intruder steps in said hole.) when placed could be something that can only be placed within dirt/grass tiles and when placed it sort of changes the tile to look looser - just so that people can identify them more easily. Obviously Punji Traps are hidden in real life, but people with keen eyes can usually tell when the ground has been tampered with.

@psykikk The way you conveyed your idea and the idea itself tells me you shouldn't be contributing to this thread. I said it's open discussion, but more or less, I want proper discussion. A lot of what I want here is a good flow of ideology, not everyone's great with that. Bad discussion or bad relayment of an idea clutters the thread and confuses people. I mean here's something to think about. Check List: 1. Is it literate? - It's not as simple as did you spell the words correctly, if your sentences don't flow or your message is fractured. It wont be conveyed properly and more importantly, it just wont stick. 2. Is it possible for developers? - Just about anything is possible in Lua for this game, but there are limitations. 3. How important is it? - Most people don't comprehend how long it takes to code something. I mean, you really need to convince people that it's really worth spending 30-40 minutes inputting your idea. Some ideas might be massive, they could take hours, days even. If it's big, it better be crucial, is my rule. 4, Criticize - Look at what you created, imagine it being put into creation. Think of everything that could go wrong, refine it, amplify it, then post it! 5. Look at history, then look at your minds eye. - If you aren't a brilliant idealist or an overly imaginative person, you can look at history. If you're like me and you've been involved in tons of mods/game modes, you'll see repetition. Copying, amplification of the same thing in different situations. Other then looking at what you've done or experienced, you can always look into your minds eye. For idealists and strong believers, you can look at a concept that's not been explored and really press into it. ------------ Looking at this, it reminded me to express why I feel my ideas are just solid. I'm not really looking through my minds eye here. A lot of mods that were like this, had similar problems. Game modes too, same for servers. My idea for loot spawning looks into immersion, into characters. In this virtual world, why would an entire town have no supplies? Secondly, why would this character stay in the town? It's completely empty and there's a few bandits hoarding literally every jar of peanut butter in Muldraug(However you spell it). Well the answer is, no one in their bloody right mind would stay in the town. What? Just stay here and starve, using your hands to craft a well? I understand that sure, eventually after a few months of infection there'd be fuck all supplies. But supplies would still move around as survivors create supply caches, die or just straight up lose things. A good way to continue supplies going, is to place dead bodies around the map as well as a few boxes. These boxes could be called supply cache's. They're post infection boxes that have been created by survivors, they hide them well and use them to store things. As for the bodies, those would be dead survivors you find lying around. They will sometimes have things on them, if they were a survivor. It makes sense and it continues an economical flow. Latent Terms: Have boxes spawn on the map that are named supply cache's. Have them hold some items. Have dead bodies around the map, have them also hold some items. Boxes + Bodies = ECONOMY! Yay.

Just have it determined at spawn. 1/4 chance they are tamable, 1/4 chance they are feral(Attack you on sight) and 2/4 chance they are neutral(Attack you if you go too close to them.). If you add time to it, then it's just a pain for the devs lol.

Oh my god, if we could get dog companions... It would be like I Am Legend the game.

If players want to play maps with runners they're free to do so, if people want to sneak from houses to houses and empty cupboards they're free to do so as well, that's still not viable reasons to add loot spawning in containers/cupboards. If loot respawns, it makes farming / hunting / fishing / food conservation / FACTUAL scarcity totally useless, they don't want scarcity to be simulated, they want scarcity of "pre-apocalyptic" ressources to become an actual fact. If loot would respawn, you could pretty much live in the same street forever, clear the zombies and keep scavenging the same houses until the end of times. That's so easy to fix though. Just have long lasting food like MRE"s as the only thing that spawns and have them extremely rare. I mean variables are a huge option. For a mod I was on, I could rec things to the dev to change. Like "Hey dude, X item spawns way too much." Then bam! He changes the variable for how often it spawns and where. It's not really hard. If you think food should spawn at a certain rate, then you do so. If you don't want an item to be spawned after start, then you don't include it. Things that spawn after the server is on should be things that are unable to be crafted, like MRE's(Very Rare) and general items. I mean no matter what, you cannot craft a gun or anything in that sense. I don't even think we can craft melee weapons. So therefore they need to spawn, because if you just have a one time only spawn on a server that could be running for hours. Then you deprive all the new joiners of ANY loot and also force possible starvation because of the fact that everything is gone. Also if you say "Oh we can just have loot only spawn on zombie corpses." You take away the element of fear, because instead of people searching houses. They'll be running around bashing zombies and searching corpses. Aren't we meant to fear the undead? Not see them as walking shopping bags? Point and close.

I'm sorry but, please don't comment here. Feel free to contribute in a year .

What about those who want to play a map with runners? Are you saying that we need to risk our characters just to find some loot by killing dangerous infected? I want to sneak from house to house, emptying the cupboards and hoping that none of the sprinters outside can hear me. Moving along with my friends at a slow pace. Not dashing around smashing zombies with a club and spamming left click on every cudboard/body I can find in the hopes that I'll find something that isn't clothes.

The whole "Lets just make everything spawn with LOADS of loot at the start." is quite honestly... not going to work. That kind of destroys an element of scavenging and scarcity. Loot respawning would still mean things are scarce, but having the server start with tons of loot is kind of like saying "Grab as much as you can.". Also, how does a server host determine how many players are going to be on? Honestly, if you just had loot respawn, it would be fine. I get you think that having loads of loot just spawn on start might work, but I'm telling you, it just won't.

I think the whole cat thing is a bit silly, it'd be SUCH a pain in the ass for the dev's if they were to try make cats properly. Although generic 'monster' class animals are fine. Ones that just attack you when they see you or only attack you if you are X amount of space away from them. Instead of talking about behavior though, think about this. What are the effects to fighting, let's say a dog? Is it hard to kill them? What would the combat orientate? What kind of wounds do you get? I mean to answer this you could say; Dogs are fairly hard to kill compared to your fast shambling zombies and pose more of a threat because of their lethal speed. They will be less endurable then a zombie though, allowing for fast precise kills if planned properly. If you are bitten, you have a damn good chance of getting an infection in the wound. Dogs attack you by launching themselves at you in a lunge and grappling, you simply have to push them X amount of times to get them off which will make them back away, stunning them for a second. If you have a baseball bat and hit them just before they lunge at you, it kills them. This makes it fair as because they can grapple you so easily, landing one shot on a dog with a weapon such as an axe or baseball bat means an instant kill.

The maps large enough, it's just really loot honestly. The fact is you can't rely people to ACTUALLY trade. But the fact is IRL if this actually happened. Not EVERY single bloody cupboard in the known universe would be stripped down. If it was, then people would just straight up leave the town because of the fact that they can't even find pillows. Loot spawning does this, ALSO: farming ^This requires some tools, prior knowledge and it takes time. On top of this you need land and you need to actually want to do it. But for this, it only covers food. Some people play zombie games for the scavenging element, like myself. If I was forced to do farming and bartering(Which would result 9 times out of 10 with me getting shotgunned in the face) I would just not play this game. Like honestly, I'd figuratively throw the digital copy out a window. Farming is only fun with friends and it's not possible if everything is already looted. Now I'm not going to hope that Bob the Hoarder is going to trade with me and give me some things I need in exchange for some potato's and a pillow. This is coming from years of modding with Gmod by the way. Designing the proper system for entertainment ALWAYS required a loot spawn, quite honestly, it never did well without it. It was a great way to encourage people to search and move around, it gave you lots to do and meant you didn't have to rely on banditry, constant trading and majorly passive work. Scavenging adds a whole new element, if done correctly in any game, it's an amazing experience. That experience so far only lasts for the first 10-40 minutes the server starts up. Right now, without the loot spawn, I don't really see myself wanting to do multiplayer at all. Singleplayer is fine for the reason that you are the only person really looting, but multiplayer... there's like 17 other players on at the same time. Server's probably been up for like hours, so the chances of you ever finding anything is like null.

Hello, I am a person who likes to think of things with my brain occasionally. Sometimes I don't and it ends up with me shooting pies out of my star gazing eyes into the abyss of... fruit loops. My writing skills might be off anyhow, I have a perfectly good excuse for that, that I can disclose never . ANY WHO - I am just going to use 'The Box' to put down my thoughts for the game. I will be going over what I already sent to the Dev/Dev's in more detail, so it's not plagiaris. Just so you get the idea that me and Mr Emailer are the same guy. - Concept Number One - The Big Bad Looting System + Zombies. Essential Raw Idea: Certain kinds of loot respawn automatically and server hosts are given the option to manually reset all non player containers to add loot to them. Server hosts will also be given the option POSSIBLY to modify the percentage of loot that spawns on their server and other things adjacent to that so as to let each server host create a custom experience for a player. Although this would involve knowing how to code, so not everyone would be able to change the variables for loot! Also if you could have area's that constantly spawn zombies that'd be great, so they can migrate from a specific zone. If in future you could give administrators on server or hosts the ability to spawn more zombies in an area or trigger a horde event that just gets all the zombies in the area collectively moving forward towards something. Purpose: Currently, the system for looting involves restarting the server or replacing ALL containers with items. Now the thing is, people can't leave the town. They can't, the map stops them. A giant invisible wall stops you from leaving this place to find other better places that might have friendlier people or more loot to scavenge. So since they can't leave for more loot if there is none and they are stuck here, what do we do about that? Well you make it so they don't feel like they want to jump out of the god forsaken empty looted town their in and have loot respawn. I know personally and many of my friends know the frustration of going around seeing empty containers and dead zombies, EVERYWHERE. We basically all gave up on multiplayer because of this, which is why I think it's super important. I know it's in development and it's super early access for multiplayer, but all I can think of is "If the Dev's fixed this one problem, multiplayer would b e an absolute blast". Extra Reasoning: I know it's not like every container will be empty, but I don't want to run around the town for 30 minutes looking for the containers that other players missed or just couldn't be fucked completely looting. I don't want to be forced to raid and kill other players for items, because I didn't join PZ so I could get a Day Z experience. I go on DayZ when I feel like shooting people like it's a game of call of duty, that's where you go to do bandit shit and feed people bloody rotten banana's. This place, is the sole haven of proper RPG gameplay. I want to survive, scavenge, build and figure out which way the zombies are coming from. I want to look through containers and find something, not sprint around the bloody map admiring all the empty cupboards and zombie bodies littering the streets. You all get the idea. Even though we could technically farm, hunt or forage in future, it's only enough for food. If you want a gun basically right now, the only way to get it is to kill someone, which encourages banditry. I want go on a multiplayer map and have a good feeling that people aren't all bandits. Notes: - Concept Number Two - Hobbies Essential Raw Idea: IMPORTANT BLOODY THING. I RECOMMEND MAXING IT OUT AT 1-3 HOBBIES PER CHARACTER OR BETTER YET, STICK WITH 2. So what came to mind is that everyone is like a blank slate of paper. People are like... empty books with only their jobs in their heads. It's like all this guy ever did in his ENTIRE life was be a fire man. Me Fire Man, me good swing, me axe man! No, we are PEOPLE! So we all have our hobbies, we all have lives outside of our jobs. Mine involves martial arts, writing and consultancy of mods. But you get it, there's something bloody there. So here's some examples of what you'd put in: Martial Artist: -Deals damage when pushing. -Overall melee damage is increased for a small amount(Like maybe a tiny, tiny amount. But I keep thinking, if you learned how to kill people with your bare hands, I'm sure you'd be a little better at swinging an axe.). -Pushes for a further distance. Gym Junkie: -Deal extra damage when using a melee weapon. -Loses food bars faster. -Loses stamina at a slightly slower rate. Book Worm: - Read books at a very fast rate. - Double effect when reading a book(In terms of boredom, it's like saying this book is going to essentially heal your 'boredom' twice as much now.) Student: - Learns all proficiencies at a rate of 10 percent faster. - Takes 20 percent longer to read books. Purpose: It creates more... story to a person. It emphasizes that we had lives, that we aren't just defined by our professions. That people did things, that they explored pathways. Instead of just having a few professions, have hobbies. They're easy as hell and don't require anything too advanced. The benefits are small, but they make enough difference that you kind of have to think of what your hobbies are for the character. Given enough hobbies, you'd need to decide how to build your character. You could build him as intelligent and have him progress faster with proficiency, while having him as a Book Worm. Extra Reasoning: Notes:

I feel as though I'm not experienced enough to constructively create idea's for elements of immersion. But what can you guys think of? Ways to make the players truly feel like they are placed into the game, that they are truly there. How can we stop people thinking of it as just a regular game and instead, as something they are a part of. Project Zomboid has amazing unlocked potential, which I hope, through the hard work of the Dev team and it's loyal community, will become an indie best seller(Right up there with Rust.). Obviously, people have already thought about this, but I like to expand topics and dig into them in an advanced way. ANYHOW, things that are already taken care of would be: Your basic atmospheric sounds, like the gun shots and planes. Although why not take it a step further? Create noises in various locations, that could either just be a house settling... or the infected. Put fear into your audio, place paranoia into it and you have something genuinely proper.