Operation Fix Late Game By Killing You Before You Get There

[Florin]

And they can. But it makes no sense to kick up a big stink about how the game isn't hard enough when it's still missing things crucial to its challenge. This is like performance tuning a car that's missing a wheel.

[EnigmaGrey]

I really don't know how adding NPCs would fix anything relating to combat with zombies, or the way zombies migrate around the map.

These changes had to be made, NPCs or no.

[lemmy101]

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I don't believe ramping up the challenge based on how the game is right now is a good idea, because key features are still missing. Namely NPCs. The lack of challenge in PZ would be mitigated a great deal by forcing the player to deal with competitive scavenging, gunfights and safehouse raids outside of multiplayer. Hopefully you won't find yourself having to roll back a bunch of these changes once NPCs come into play. That being said, stuff like zombie migration should happen regardless.

Actually NPCs will likely make the game harder as well as easier. While I agree that we'll probably need a further rebalance then, it makes no sense leaving the game unbalanced for the meantime. NPCs aren't going to be released tomorrow.

[Florin]

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I don't believe ramping up the challenge based on how the game is right now is a good idea, because key features are still missing. Namely NPCs. The lack of challenge in PZ would be mitigated a great deal by forcing the player to deal with competitive scavenging, gunfights and safehouse raids outside of multiplayer. Hopefully you won't find yourself having to roll back a bunch of these changes once NPCs come into play. That being said, stuff like zombie migration should happen regardless.

Actually NPCs will likely make the game harder as well as easier. While I agree that we'll probably need a further rebalance then, it makes no sense leaving the game unbalanced for the meantime. NPCs aren't going to be released tomorrow.

Fair enough, I guess... I wouldn't know how far off they are. But I do think a lot of the complaints about how easy it is to reach a stable plateau in the game will be silenced by the lethality gun-toting NPCs ought to add.

[Coraxes]

I thought I'd drop this and see how many have similar thoughts about the game. As I've mentioned in other posts around the forum, I feel currently PZ can do more in terms of punishing you for spending way too much time focusing on a single aspect to your survival. 

 

As it stands, the only thing that will directly harm your health when neglected is your thirst and hunger. Default hunger/thirst depletion rates can easily be covered with little food/water thus enabling one to power play through say carpentry or the such for the first several days. Same can be said about food as well. One can just spend a day or two doing nothing but looting food and water (which are both usually in the same place).

 

Now I dislike making analogies to other games, but I love how in Don't Starve when you spend a whole day doing one thing and that one thing only, like gathering food, you won't make it through the night. You didn't make sure to have any firewood to fend of the death the darkness brings. Assume its winter and you'll die for the same reason, no fuel to stay warm. 

 

Now I'm not saying PZ needs to do those exact things and some don't translate well. Gathering wood isn't as fast and easy in PZ for example (even though we can gather wood with a renewable and somewhat easy to find foraging mechanic). That being said however, does anyone feel like there could be something similar implemented, as a means to help kill us faster? The easy fix of course to look into make the extreme temperatures cause more health issues, but I wonder how many would dislike having to worry about things like this. Keep in mind that a "default" starting setting would put you in a timeframe where you wouldn't have to worry too much (if at all) about the temp until you had plenty of time to do something about it.

 

I know passing out from lack of sleep has been bounced around too.

[taha]

You can't just mess with the extreme cold / heat mechanics without giving the players means to counter that.

It I wear sweater, pants and shoes, stay next tile to fire and still have "cold" icon there... something is wrong. Same for heat.

 

I was frustrated back then, when I discovered the wet mechanics and found no umbrellas or raincoats in game. But you can counter that with towels and / or staying indoors when raining.

 

Like I said, extreme temperatures cannot be implemented without giving players means to fight against it. But... how will this affect the crops? Will I lose all my harvest because of cold? Or extreme heat... do I have to expect forest fires like in Don't Starve (btw, the heat mechanics were always modded - read "removed" - in my DS games, I play for fun and I consider those annoying and poor implemented)

 

Back to PZ a lot of things can be introduced to amp the difficulty, and not just for the sake of doing it:

 

- Weight mechanics could be tweaked - eg right now the weight of a ring is the same with the weight of a soap or a paper clip. Better and more realistic weights should be considered.

 

- Running, tree cutting, fighting - basically actions producing exertion should produce hunger / thirst as well.

 

- Portioning (eating 1/2 or 1/4 from food) should be reduced to certain foods. Eating 1/4 from a strawberry does not make sense to me for example.

 

- Nutritional values for almost all foods should be reduced drastically (If you eat 1 potato then you are able to run, fight, cut trees and carry logs home, then you probably solved the world food problems)

 

- You should require way, way more food to function properly.

 

- Bad moods should be something you should avoid, not something you can ignore and keep playing (harsher stat loss, and maybe synergy between moods - constant state of "hunger" or "thirst" should bring unhappiness, etc)

 

- Disposing of dead bodies should become a priority (what kind of person keeps a rotting corpse in the backyard, really now...). Making corpses rise after say... 12 game hours should make the players more careful.

 

- Walking around with huge loads of loot should have consequences. Not only in walking speed, but in player health.

 

In my opinion, just making hunger and thirst a real issue would have a huge impact on game-play.

 

Make every player to have an eating meter ranging from -100 to +100.

2 game days without food would kill a player, maybe 3 with light eater.

Divide each food value by 10.. and there you go.

 

Just my 2 nails

[EnigmaGrey]

Since this is now released . . . Locked.