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Operation Fix Late Game By Killing You Before You Get There


lemmy101

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I don't know if there is an easy way of implementing this programming-wise, but what if the zombies "breakWallFactor" increased exponentially with each additional zombie. Unrealistic? Maybe. Exponentially might be to much, but I think it would serve both the gameplay and the realism well to increase the amount of "damage" to the wall quite much with each zombie. My guess is that, right now in the game, every zombie just cause their own separate damage against the wall/door/window every few seconds. If that's true the game doesn't take the zombies combined weight into account! 

 

If we take crowd disasters as a reference, I would expect zombie hordes to push over walls, rather than shatter them. Quoting from the link: "Experiments to determine concentrated forces on guardrails due to leaning and pushing have shown that force of 30% to 75% of participant weight can occur." Taking the high end of the range, that'd be about 130 lb (62 kg) per zombie pushing towards a given length of wall.

 

If an entire horde starts heading in the same direction all at once - say, if a gunshot is fired on the far side of a wall - the ones near the wall might be trying to move sideways, but the force from the rest could easily push down a wall. Probably wouldn't need to be more than ten zombies deep to do it.

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Hi Devs,

 

I backed this game when the first demo was revealed. I have only toyed around in it occasionally because I have been waiting till the development was at a certain stage before I put it in my regular gaming rotation. I have however been keeping a close eye on the development.

 

I just wanted to say that when you first started introducing all of the survival skills (carpentry, farming etc) I became very wary because it was obvious from an early stage how easy this would make it to stay alive. I too love the brutality of rogue style games (Including games just taking some concepts from rogue-likes like Spelunky, and FTL) and started to worry about the direction Project Zomboid was taking.

 

This thread has completely disolved my doubts about the development direction of Project Zomboid, and has indicated to me that what I consider the first playable version of the game is very close at hand. Thank you for being so open with the community during the entire development process, and for not letting the casual (Including new players or media) audience dilute your vision of an unforgiving cruel apocolypse.

 

The decision to include a beginner mode which the game encourages new players to play first, and to make the initial days of survival equal (if not slightly easier due to earlier baracades etc) to the current difficulty, and to make survival get progressively harder is great.

 

You have been given a lot of hurdles since this game was first revealed, and I am sure the entire community would like to thank you very much for your perseverance in your quest to bring your vision to us all.

 

Regards

Daniel

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I had an idea about the farming problem. The fact that it's a "safe way" to live by in the late game is not the problem, it's the fact that you have to spend all your  time doing this if you don't want to starve. (I never played this way, too much "funbreaking" for me, I prefer to create a fort inside a city, fight for his safety, and then build whatever i want (I lastly build a Burningman, yay o/).

So, maybe in the next, or later, update, you could put some way to water the crop like this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation
It would cost some raw materiel (a water gathering + some curvy plank) and require a level 3 or 4 (maybe 5? I think it's too long but w/e) in farming. This would be a good way to keep the farming in the game as it is, but with less time-leeching on the game. (Such an organisation).

The more the crops, the more the need in raw material. (I know that when you have an axe and a saw raw material aren't really a problem, but w/e). Maybe ask for some plastic pipeline ? 

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Wouldn't mind fruits/veges staying on the plant a bit longer as long as birds/animals would actively take them.

So long as they also introduce the different ways to counter such behavior. A scarecrow would be nice to deter birds. Having cats nearby could deter birds and rats. Dogs could deter deer. I also think that there's a type of hanging bird nest you can make out of a melon that attracts a certain species of bird that only eats insects and will attack any other birds that come nearby, protecting your crops. I can't remember what this bird was called, though. 

 

I also think it would be an awesome idea to be able to put up a tree stand or deer stand and station a hunter in areas where you have crops to shoot and bag whatever the crop tiles attract. Maybe put up some traps around your main crops to catch any small game that might try and eat your hard won vegetables. Maybe if there's a treeline nearby you could put up trap fencing going from tree to tree with occasional openings where you've setup deadfalls or dug out spike pits.

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I'm not an expert on farming by any means, but as a person who likes to loot from house to house with the goal of making it from Muldraugh all the way to the mall, seeds are -way- too common.

 

Insofar as seeds go, I usually can gather about 10-12 packets from a housing block (one housing area surrounded by roads). And that's not just one seed, it's packets, which contain multiple. In addition to that, these packets are often found in places that make no sense logistically, such as in ritzy neighborhoods or houses that aren't exactly equipped to start growing their own fruits and vegetables. I could see finding packets in hardware stores and out by the farms and such, but it just seems weird to have them be so common place in random homes.

 

I live in a state near Kentucky, and even in a farming area like this one, only one of my neighbors on the whole of my suburban street has vegetables planted in their yard. This says to me that the odds of looting any of my neighbors come zed time, the odds of seed packets would be way lower than is indicated by the game.

 

Then this introduces a new potential problem for people who don't want to make the long haul to hardware stores or the farms, or deal with the risk associated with that. That's why I think perhaps food can be sacrificed to get the seeds, or maybe even seeds are saved from the consumption of food. For example, when you eat (or destroy) an apple, you can get one to a number of Apple Seeds; when you eat (or destroy) a watermelon, you get one to a number of Watermelon seeds. I'm not sure if the rotting of food should destroy the seeds as well, though. I'm not an expert on rotten food except not to eat it.

 

Anyway, that's my thoughts on farming and how it could be adjusted to be harder to start and sustain as a reliable food source, as it was described.

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Finding seeds and gardening equipment in random homes isn't that unusual. I live in Kentucky and my job takes me down more city streets, suburbs, and rural back roads than I care to think about. And let me tell you, there are a lot of people out there who garden. It's most common in the poorer areas with mobile homes but, given the state of the economy, I'm seeing more and more middle and upper class neighborhoods getting into the gardening thing as a hobby to help cut expenses.

 

I'd even go so far as to suggest the devs up the spawn rate of seeds and gardening equipment considerably. I mean, if even half of the community proposed suggestions get added we'll need all the seeds we can get our hands on to make farming even come close to being a viable method of getting food.

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Do keep in mind that most people don't store seeds, though. You buy them during the season and then plant them, as most harvest seeds are not guaranteed in the packet beyond the season they were bought in. Burpee (a seed manufacturer) takes all of the seeds we have left over to give away/plant at the end of the season, because if they don't they wouldn't last to the next (at my old job).

 

So finding the actual seeds in home would actually be pretty uncommon imo, but you could potentially find large stockpiles in stores.

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Do keep in mind that most people don't store seeds, though. You buy them during the season and then plant them, as most harvest seeds are not guaranteed in the packet beyond the season they were bought in. Burpee (a seed manufacturer) takes all of the seeds we have left over to give away/plant at the end of the season, because if they don't they wouldn't last to the next (at my old job).

 

So finding the actual seeds in home would actually be pretty uncommon imo, but you could potentially find large stockpiles in stores.

Huh? I've got several dozen packets of seeds stored away, some more than a couple years old, that I plant from time to time and I usually get a decent number of them germinating when I do. Germination rate does dwindle after some time but even if they were stored for a long time I'd still expect to see at least fifty percent viability.

 

I'm also not sure that storing seeds only in stores and warehouses would make gameplay sense. Once NPCs get in, and definitely in multiplayer, that would mean that the first few groups that get to the storage places in question would be able to horde all the seeds for themselves.

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I don't see anything wrong with certain resources being quite limited. It gives actual meaning to trade and socializing. If everyone has everything, they can just sit in their bases forever, which is exactly what we're trying to stop. All I know is, both Burpee (our residential seed supplier) and our corn/wheat/forage mix suppliers bought back their supplies every year because they said they weren't viable the next season.

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I don't think they should only be in stores and warehouses, but definitely that their appearance in houses needs to be reduced.

 

As for the possibility of hording seeds, that's why I suggested the seed collection from the eating/destruction of food. That way, everyone can have access to seeds, just not in the numbers you'd see from opening a packet.

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Most seeds in food are going to be incapable of reproducing, unfortunately. The people who genetically engineer seeds make them only last one generation intentionally in most cases, largely to make sure they keep their market (so farmers reproduce their expensive genetically engineered seeds and never have to buy again). There are some exceptions, but it's largely implausible (in America, at least).

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The approach to make the game as realistic as possible is admirable, and it does often add more than mere flavor. It's cool if the players get the feeling that they would (sort of) have a chance in a real life apocalyptic situation if they were doing the same things as in the game, and vice versa: Once you are comfortable with the controls and UI you get to use real logic and survival skills to survive, without having to deal as much with weird game logics.


 


But we know that we play a game and we should accept some decrease of realism if it makes the game play more fun, right? So what Im saying is that the ability to plant crops to survive is fun, and it should be hard to get it right sometimes, but I don't want to play a farming-simulator 70% of the game time because the more thrilling aspects of game play have died down after the first in-game month. Im not saying that’s how the game is now (I wouldn’t know because I haven’t tried farming), but some talk in this thread about how to make farming more realistic doesn't really float my boat. For me, the fun Endgame lies in constant or near constant threat; 


in the: "We’re safe for now” *wiping sweat from brow*


as opposed to: ”We’re safe for all eternity” *planting some potatoes*


 


The reason for all the realism must be to make game play fun.


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Thing is, I have only survived little more than one month. That's mostly because I couldn't come up with a reason to continue. My safe house was fully barricaded and I'd built a wall enclosing a space from one side of the house. The game, who had been a blast to play up to this point, became boring the moment I realized that I don't need to build better defenses or safe guard the perimeter to survive.

 

This is what really needs to be changed.  Zombies should be able to break down walls.  Perhaps walls should only succumb when multiple zombies are attacking it.  This way, when a horde comes a-knockin, they will provide a real, actual challenge.

 

 

I absolutely agree!

 

I would add to that, the ability for the zombies to pull from the sheet ropes and remove them. You may be safe from their grasp on your fortress, but unless you stockpile sheets like a mad-man, you'll have to "fly down" eventually :)

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The approach to make the game as realistic as possible is admirable, and it does often add more than mere flavor. It's cool if the players get the feeling that they would (sort of) have a chance in a real life apocalyptic situation if they were doing the same things as in the game, and vice versa: Once you are comfortable with the controls and UI you get to use real logic and survival skills to survive, without having to deal as much with weird game logics.

 

But we know that we play a game and we should accept some decrease of realism if it makes the game play more fun, right? So what Im saying is that the ability to plant crops to survive is fun, and it should be hard to get it right sometimes, but I don't want to play a farming-simulator 70% of the game time because the more thrilling aspects of game play have died down after the first in-game month. Im not saying that’s how the game is now (I wouldn’t know because I haven’t tried farming), but some talk in this thread about how to make farming more realistic doesn't really float my boat. For me, the fun Endgame lies in constant or near constant threat; 

in the: "We’re safe for now” *wiping sweat from brow*

as opposed to: ”We’re safe for all eternity” *planting some potatoes*

 

The reason for all the realism must be to make game play fun.

 

 

This is exactly why the debate is focusing partly on increasing farming difficulty. Because it is too easy and pays back too quickly. It does not at all feel like a "long term survival strategy", instead it is a quick fix for food in even the smallest of fortresses or safe houses.

 

You say you don't agree on the realism aspect of farming, yet you want a constant threat in the late game. You see the issue is that currently there is no stress or suspense or constant fear in the late game partly because of the easy and arcadey farming system. Increasing the time crops can grow (and also the time they can survive.) would make it possible to do other things than bucket brigade water to potatoes.

 

So in short I don't quite understand your reasoning as the two points you argue are opposed.

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The approach to make the game as realistic as possible is admirable, and it does often add more than mere flavor. It's cool if the players get the feeling that they would (sort of) have a chance in a real life apocalyptic situation if they were doing the same things as in the game, and vice versa: Once you are comfortable with the controls and UI you get to use real logic and survival skills to survive, without having to deal as much with weird game logics.

 

But we know that we play a game and we should accept some decrease of realism if it makes the game play more fun, right? So what Im saying is that the ability to plant crops to survive is fun, and it should be hard to get it right sometimes, but I don't want to play a farming-simulator 70% of the game time because the more thrilling aspects of game play have died down after the first in-game month. Im not saying that’s how the game is now (I wouldn’t know because I haven’t tried farming), but some talk in this thread about how to make farming more realistic doesn't really float my boat. For me, the fun Endgame lies in constant or near constant threat; 

in the: "We’re safe for now” *wiping sweat from brow*

as opposed to: ”We’re safe for all eternity” *planting some potatoes*

 

The reason for all the realism must be to make game play fun.

 

 

This is exactly why the debate is focusing partly on increasing farming difficulty. Because it is too easy and pays back too quickly. It does not at all feel like a "long term survival strategy", instead it is a quick fix for food in even the smallest of fortresses or safe houses.

 

You say you don't agree on the realism aspect of farming, yet you want a constant threat in the late game. You see the issue is that currently there is no stress or suspense or constant fear in the late game partly because of the easy and arcadey farming system. Increasing the time crops can grow (and also the time they can survive.) would make it possible to do other things than bucket brigade water to potatoes.

 

So in short I don't quite understand your reasoning as the two points you argue are opposed.

 

I think part of the problem is that currently, crops REQUIRE baby sitting. If you leave for more than a day or two to scavenge, most crops will die. Pretty sure crops can survive longer than that without rain. Watering them extra at the beginning to get them going seems fine, its the fact that they require constant attention which is a problem. But yeah, right now you can basically sit forever on your rooftop with the way things are currently. Perhaps a compromise can be reached, where if they don't get enough water right away they simply take longer to grow instead of outright dying like they do most of the time.

 

I think they should be a little bit hardier, but require a LOT more time to grow. As someone also said earlier, Mason Jars would become incredibly valuable if canning is ever added, and would encourage more scavenging missions to acquire them.

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Increasing the time crops can grow (and also the time they can survive.) would make it possible to do other things than bucket brigade water to potatoes.

 

 

Yes, that sounds great as long as you don't have to attend crops every waking hour. 

 

I didn't know it was feeling arcadey, as in fast and simple right now, because I haven't tried farming. What I was afraid of when people talked about realism (and this could all be in my head now. I should probably read the thread again!), was that the difficulty of the late game was to be ramped up by requiring more attention and time spent on attending the crops instead of making the real physical threat (the zombies) destroy your farm

 

I'm all for the Harder to survive in any way possible, including making farming harder. But not when harder only equals more time spent baby sitting crops, to use the wording of Moose65.

 

I like starvation to be a real threat too, and I think that the increased threat from zombies will make it so. Right now I can survive without farming (in single player) for quite a while. I can scavenge methodically from the safety of my house with no real danger of having a horde break-in when I'm out. If the physical threat of the all-destroying horde gets implemented again I have to divide my time between guarding the perimeter, scavenging for tools and food, rebuilding my walls and other safety systems, and tending crops. As it feels right now, I don't have to divide my time.

 

But I realize what you're saying and can't help but agree. If farming is that simple it should require something more; maybe time. As you guys said it would be really cool if you didn't get much crops even after a long time, but had some way of extending their life with jars (which you first would have to find).

 

I'm really looking forward to the increased difficulty. Hope it comes soon!

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On the subject of invincible fortifications: I'm not familiar with the Erosion mod, but if your walls tend to rot away over time (slowly if built on concrete, quickly if built on dirt), that would force the player to do patrols, temporary patches a la barricades, and eventually tear down and rebuild. Combine that with Spacejunk's suggestion that zombies tend to drift towards sound over time, and you have disaster awaiting anyone who thinks their defenses will protect them forever. :evil:

 

 

The late game problem really is just one issue.  There is a nearly complete lack of randomness and no ramping-up difficulty..  Essentially if you clear out a neighborhood and grow some crops you never need to leave your safe haven again and nothing will ever bother you. 

  • No zombie horde will ever show up and threaten your walls/barricades
  • No NPCs will threaten you.
  • No storms will ruin your crops.
  • You won't get sick.
  • You won't starve to death.
  • You won't freeze.
  • There are no compelling reasons to ever leave the safety of your compound.

Luckily they are working on this. Zombie migration and NPCs should make a huge difference.  Tweaking farming, the health system, combat, erosion, and other parts of the game have helped or will help.  I think the developers are moving the game in the right direction.  The hard part is for me to be patient.  I have not played since build 23 and probably won't come back until they add NPCs or migration but I do plan to play again.

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Increasing the time crops can grow (and also the time they can survive.) would make it possible to do other things than bucket brigade water to potatoes.

 

 

Yes, that sounds great as long as you don't have to attend crops every waking hour. 

 

I didn't know it was feeling arcadey, as in fast and simple right now, because I haven't tried farming. What I was afraid of when people talked about realism (and this could all be in my head now. I should probably read the thread again!), was that the difficulty of the late game was to be ramped up by requiring more attention and time spent on attending the crops instead of making the real physical threat (the zombies) destroy your farm

 

I'm all for the Harder to survive in any way possible, including making farming harder. But not when harder only equals more time spent baby sitting crops, to use the wording of Moose65.

 

I like starvation to be a real threat too, and I think that the increased threat from zombies will make it so. Right now I can survive without farming (in single player) for quite a while. I can scavenge methodically from the safety of my house with no real danger of having a horde break-in when I'm out. If the physical threat of the all-destroying horde gets implemented again I have to divide my time between guarding the perimeter, scavenging for tools and food, rebuilding my walls and other safety systems, and tending crops. As it feels right now, I don't have to divide my time.

 

But I realize what you're saying and can't help but agree. If farming is that simple it should require something more; maybe time. As you guys said it would be really cool if you didn't get much crops even after a long time, but had some way of extending their life with jars (which you first would have to find).

 

I'm really looking forward to the increased difficulty. Hope it comes soon!

 

 

I guess they should make Farming less of a micromanagment of carrots and potatos and more about waiting and just watering the plants at the right time.

 

Or atleast have a way to craft something so it can water the plants for you, but it takes a bit longer and has some risks to it.

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Evaporation of water seems like it should be a thing, too. Having that as a serious issue in irrigation systems would probably make things difficult, too.

 

Also, water contamination. Imagine getting a fungus in your irrigation tank.

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If you really want to make things hard to survive don't make rain barrels available until carpentry level 4 or 5. You'll be drinking from toilets for months and it will force you to go out and explore where you might not want to (eventually).

No, thank you. I'd rather they be nerfed immensely and made a little easier to build.

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