RELEASED: Build 30.12

[TheSilentBugler]

Hiya all, playing for a while, just registered.

 

Just started a new sandbox, everything at defaults except loot turned up a tad.

 

After an exporation of starting house I headed outside to find a mass of zombies making a beeline for my toon from beyond my sight radius.

 

Got eaten, never seen clairvoyant zombies before.

 

Is this normal?

 

Certainly didn't happen in any of my last games.

[Madigari]

Hiya all, playing for a while, just registered.

 

Just started a new sandbox, everything at defaults except loot turned up a tad.

 

After an exporation of starting house I headed outside to find a mass of zombies making a beeline for my toon from beyond my sight radius.

 

Got eaten, never seen clairvoyant zombies before.

 

Is this normal?

 

Certainly didn't happen in any of my last games.

 

They're not actually from beyond your sight radius. Your sight radius goes farther than the default zoom area around your character.

 

They got a buff to where if your character could see them, they can see you (if they're faced the right way, anyway).

[TheSilentBugler]

Xray sight though, they were coming from every direction, even behind houses. madness.

 

Still, fun

[Madigari]

they were coming from every direction, even behind houses.

 

That's because their moans also now attract other zombies to create hordes in the world naturally.

[TheSilentBugler]

Yeah, read about that, but it looked like they were all pathing directly at my char, not each other, never mind though, next game didn't do it.

[Coraxes]

Some more feedback now on the comparison between "8 months in" and Survival: I read that dev post on steam about how the devs want to go nuclear on the difficulty, but I don't see it in the standard survival settings. Am I right to assume that nothing there has changed, with the exception of the IWBUMS changes? Survival feels like a walk in the park to me, because the few zombies that there are can be easily herded and parked at a distance away from my point of interest. 

Has anyone tried to burn zombies with an insane zombie count? I wonder if a fire spreads all over the town your in.

 

In one of the earlier 30 builds, before the exertion/migration change, I did an 8 Months run, although I did bump their senses. With one campfire, I decimated everything in an 4 block radius around the gigamart in WP. Which eqautes to more than half of the zombies in that part of town. Rushing to forage the mats to make a raw axe for the wood needed to do it and carry all that weight to the right spot near the horde without attracting them was rough. However, after it was lit there was no stopping the destructive force this seemingly innocent tool can unleash. So much so that I've had to make myself stop using them for that purpose. I wonder if making it so a fire had HP or durability or what have you, and it degraded each time a zombie walked over it would help bring it in line. I do believe it should do what is does, just probably not so easily.

[Yolan]

One thing I'm not sure about regarding Binky's stated desire to make things exponentially harder, is how this fits in with...

 

1 - large open world with lots of space where zombies are rare

2 - farming/fishing/foraging

 

 

We aren't going to have 1 removed, which means 2 will need to be tweaked more to make it more dependent on bring supplemented with supplies from zombie heavy areas. Not sure how that would work though. Without making farming basically pointless, you are still talking about letting players live many months in the wilderness. I sure don't want to see scripted clumps of zombies spawning at my base somewhere just because I am there. 

[Wolfen]

One thing I'm not sure about regarding Binky's stated desire to make things exponentially harder, is how this fits in with...

 

1 - large open world with lots of space where zombies are rare

2 - farming/fishing/foraging

 

 

We aren't going to have 1 removed, which means 2 will need to be tweaked more to make it more dependent on bring supplemented with supplies from zombie heavy areas. Not sure how that would work though. Without making farming basically pointless, you are still talking about letting players live many months in the wilderness. I sure don't want to see scripted clumps of zombies spawning at my base somewhere just because I am there. 

 

yeah, this is a problem I have with zombies in Redneck land

 

Though it wouldn't be far fetched to have NPC bands of thugs or raiders, or motorcycle gangs come by and screw with you 

:3

[Moose65]

 

In one of the earlier 30 builds, before the exertion/migration change, I did an 8 Months run, although I did bump their senses. With one campfire, I decimated everything in an 4 block radius around the gigamart in WP. Which eqautes to more than half of the zombies in that part of town. Rushing to forage the mats to make a raw axe for the wood needed to do it and carry all that weight to the right spot near the horde without attracting them was rough. However, after it was lit there was no stopping the destructive force this seemingly innocent tool can unleash. So much so that I've had to make myself stop using them for that purpose. I wonder if making it so a fire had HP or durability or what have you, and it degraded each time a zombie walked over it would help bring it in line. I do believe it should do what is does, just probably not so easily.

 

 

This, among sheet ropes, are something that I think zombies should be able to destroy. If their stomping through the campfire, their probably kicking and scattering around the fire to the point that it would be smaller, less harmful fires. Right now campfires are the ultimate horde destruction tool, and this somehow needs to be addressed.

[Coraxes]

One thing I'm not sure about regarding Binky's stated desire to make things exponentially harder, is how this fits in with...

 

1 - large open world with lots of space where zombies are rare

2 - farming/fishing/foraging

 

 

We aren't going to have 1 removed, which means 2 will need to be tweaked more to make it more dependent on bring supplemented with supplies from zombie heavy areas. Not sure how that would work though. Without making farming basically pointless, you are still talking about letting players live many months in the wilderness. I sure don't want to see scripted clumps of zombies spawning at my base somewhere just because I am there. 

 

See many many people echoing this. Not sure why so many are dead set against having random scripted attacks against you. Its not like you aren't aware (assuming it gets put in) that it could happen, Just means you constantly have to be ready for an attack and have the means to fend them off. This should NOT be hard to do by the time an attack should occur. I see people's streams and videos and can't understand why so many flip out when a small-moderate group is attacking them for whatever reason. They're brain dead zombies. Its not hard to move them to where you want them to be if you aren't prepared to engage them (which you should be! Preparation is almost everything in this game, why wouldn't it apply to zombie defense as well?)

 

Just me two cents at least, on the whole scripted events thing.

[EnigmaGrey]

Yep, I've advocated going back to just migrating the zombies across an area, at a flat rate of speed, and spawning them near the player, before. It's a shame there were several 20 page threads when that was tried by the developer, but there's something charming about being able to do, say, this:

(Mind, they're not rounded off on the edges), that's just the line of sight.

But you definitely wouldn't be able to "handle," this. It'd be more of a "get the fuck out of there" thing.

It's just a shame there was so much outrage when the meta-game was in full swing . . .

[Florin]

I think my computer would die trying to render that many zombies.

[Coraxes]

Oh my EG that is exactly what I long for. Having something like that going on means I MUST have a contingency plan, at any given point, in order to recover from that.

 

Make no mistake though people, you can recover from that (at least in current builds, not sure what it was like back then). You just need to have an "oh shit" bag laying around with your primary, can't do without supplies, such as the saw, axe, hammer/nails, etc. You leave this bag laying about and when shit hits the fan you grab it (and whatever you got time for thats sitting on your shelfs) and bail.

 

I would love to see scenarios like that. Its not even too unfeasible. In some zombie lore, like the walking dead, its been established they herds can form from something simple as one zombie making a sound and another starts to follow it and makes a sound, another hears it and follows it and then makes its own moan, and the process keeps going (think that what we have in game atm). But (in TWD lore) these herds don't stop, they all just "keep follow a sound they've all forgotten". Eventually they turn up to ruin somebodys day, and that can and should be us. You can even work it for those who clamour about being relatively "safe" out in the woods so that they get a much much lower chance of such an event, but none of us should ever feel "safe". We should always be prepared to ditch what we're doing and flee, sometimes leaving behind that one or two key items that would've made things cakewalk. Take TWD again as an example, how many times do these poor guys settle down just to find out they gotta get moving again.

 

Now I can completely and honestly understand why people would rail against something EG's herd. If I wasn't particularly wanted herds or scripted events or whatever, I would be very cross to find this making its way to my awesome safehouse that took me some long ass time to get to where it is. So perhaps a mechanic could be put in that these particular zombies behave differently than the normal ones. In a sense that they (the majority of the herd) MUST keep moving on after X time. That way if forced out of a safehouse, one can post up relatively close by and watch until its safe to go back and deal with the stragglers.

[NewBornpt]

Ohhh my XD ... EG i want HEARDS like that :>

[Marco1]

eheh, I would like to see that. Especially I would enjoy watching them destroy those 4 story "average joe's" safehouses, however you could still live on the top of that group with the floating floors and sheet ropes, so that looks less scary now.

[EnigmaGrey]

eheh, I would like to see that. Especially I would enjoy watching them destroy those 4 story "average joe's" safehouses, however you could still live on the top of that group with the floating floors and sheet ropes, so that looks less scary now.

Those pillars that you craft are meant to act as the structure for buildings. At one time, taking them out was supposed to collapse any structure above that didn't have adequate support.

Another one for the "Soon" pile.

[Marco1]

Those pillars that you craft are meant to act as the structure for buildings. At one time, taking them out was supposed to collapse any structure above that didn't have adequate support.

Another one for the "Soon" pile.

eheh, I was joking, but good to know about the "soon" part

I think the best thing is going in the direction character must never feel safe or be completely safe.

[Yolan]

Rather than scripted stuff, I would prefer to see some heard control guiding groups along the map so that even if you are say, in a quite out of way place, you are likely to get a visit after a few weeks/months. 

 

But in any case, once NPCs are in that may change the dynamics significantly. If we are assuming that some groups are lead by bastards who want our safe house, and they find you.. well then that's possibly much more dangerous than zombies.

[Tomcat]

Don't get it in the wrong way i really love the game , i really appreciate what devs are doing ( best dev team ever imho) , the 30 build is just amazing,  but that  thing with the exhaustion system is imho a game breaker.  Why i say that because i really like to kill zombies with my nailed baseball bat but atm after killing 2- 3 zombies u get tired and u have to rest. For like 20 sec of battle u need to spend 2-3 ingame hours resting for your fatigue to be gone. That's a bit much. I can understand like 10 -20 ingame minutes but 2 hours is way too much. Anyway really good job with the game and keep up the good work. Best regards, Tomcat.

[EnigmaGrey]

Don't get it in the wrong way i really love the game , i really appreciate what devs are doing ( best dev team ever imho) , the 30 build is just amazing,  but that  thing with the exhaustion system is imho a game breaker.  Why i say that because i really like to kill zombies with my nailed baseball bat but atm after killing 2- 3 zombies u get tired and u have to rest. For like 20 sec of battle u need to spend 2-3 ingame hours resting for your fatigue to be gone. That's a bit much. I can understand like 10 -20 ingame minutes but 2 hours is way too much. Anyway really good job with the game and keep up the good work. Best regards, Tomcat.

You don't need to wait the full 2 hours, particularly if you only have one exhaustion moodle. Endurance also regenerates by standing around (slower than resting), and walking (slower than standing) at a pretty good rate.

Exhaustion itself is calculated based on damage; unless there's an issue with the nailed bat producing significantly more damage (overkill), you should be able to take on quite a few zombies with it. If that it is the case, it is bug.

[Coraxes]

I think that the only way to find a middle ground for everyone to be happy about this whole new exertion system, is to just add it the sandbox options. Let those who just want to bash zombies heads in all day raise the amount of actions they're allowed to do before getting the exerted moodle. That why we can still work with the new system without alienating those who think they should be able to do more before having to take a break.

 

Conversely, with said option created, those who want to make it even harder can turn it up, making their actions reach the exerted moodle even faster. 

[Manuls]

Hi,

 

I wanted to give my oppinion about the new Update:

 

After reading the Mondoid about 30.9 i thought: Nice its going to be harder already!

 

When i played it, the first 3-4 Death in like 20-40 minutes it felt like the update broke the game. That is because i just wanted to follow my standart procedure. Yeye find weapon, kill all Zombies bothering me and try out stuff from the late game ( farming, levelling up weapons etc.)

 

 

But at the 5th more careful start it dawned on me. Now i actually get the satisfaction and excitement i had when i was approaching the mall for the first time(the most crowded place in the world) from just trying to get to the next building to find some food and water. I started again to close curtains, sneak around try to plan my day(the stuff another person posted before me), feeling really scared again even of a group of 5 Zombies.

 

I Fucking Love It! I feel like i have forgotten how this game felt at the beginning, but now it feels like it again. Awesome Job Devs!

 

And that doesnt even involve the Awesome new Overgrowth of the map with all the new plants, the new ,medical system TENSE!

 

And the new desaturated Colours! Nice nice nice. What a wonderful upgrade!

 

Great Work guys much Apreciated!

 

 

One negative: Stuttering after like 20 mins every 20 secs. Even worse in splitscreen (EVEN HERE NICE UPDATE!)

 

Sum it up: Love the devs, love the community, love the game. Thanks.

[bpitterl]

Rather than scripted stuff, I would prefer to see some heard control guiding groups along the map so that even if you are say, in a quite out of way place, you are likely to get a visit after a few weeks/months. 

 

But in any case, once NPCs are in that may change the dynamics significantly. If we are assuming that some groups are lead by bastards who want our safe house, and they find you.. well then that's possibly much more dangerous than zombies.

Yes, I'm glad to see this topic arising on the thread.  This is basically what I was hoping for with build 30, but after many hours of playing it doesn't look like zombie behavior has progressed to this point yet.  I'm not sure that attacks need to be scripted, but I've advocated in the past for ramping or accelerated difficulty as the game progresses.   I'd love to see a giant horde like the one in Enigma's screenshot.  Something unstoppable (except maybe by campfire it sounds .  

 

I once burned my (in game) house down cooking burnt chicken.  It was a bummer, but it also forced me to start over with finding new supplies, tools, and weapons, which presented a fun challenge.  I've never had to make the walk from one town to the next simply because I usually get bored long before the town I spawn in loses resources to keep me alive.  An unstoppable horde that decimated everything in its path might actually force you to hit the highroad and take what you can with you on your back.

 

Accelerating spawning might not really do the trick by itself.  I don't think its necessarily about the number of zombies on the map but also about how they migrate.  Too many random zombies clumped in every possible location can be annoying, and makes the early game almost too difficult to enjoy. This is why simply setting them to insane doesn't really make for a compelling gaming experience. My experience has also been that the meta-noises don't seem to generate enough zombie movement to keep my on my toes or threaten my base.  Establishing a delicate balance of difficulty for the various stages (early, mid, late) as the game progresses is critical, and I think keeping players on the move, or at least finding mechanisms to generate threat to bases needs to be a top priority.  At least in my opinion.

[Coraxes]

 

 

Accelerating spawning might not really do the trick by itself.  I don't think its necessarily about the number of zombies on the map but also about how they migrate.  Too many random zombies clumped in every possible location can be annoying, and makes the early game almost too difficult to enjoy. This is why simply setting them to insane doesn't really make for a compelling gaming experience. My experience has also been that the meta-noises don't seem to generate enough zombie movement to keep my on my toes or threaten my base.  Establishing a delicate balance of difficulty for the various stages (early, mid, late) as the game progresses is critical, and I think keeping players on the move, or at least finding mechanisms to generate threat to bases needs to be a top priority.  At least in my opinion.

 

 

That is why I was pointing (in scripted events or more meta sounds) out that by the time such an event will even occur, you should long, long be ready for it. Only someone running around aimlessly for days on end in the beginning and neglecting any kind of preparation would fail to be able to do anything about it.

 

[EnigmaGrey]

I think that the only way to find a middle ground for everyone to be happy about this whole new exertion system, is to just add it the sandbox options.

Already done.