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Exhaustion feedback


lemmy101

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I don't think anyone questions that someone would get winded in a real life situation like that. The real question that needs to be asked and debated is, "Does it make for good and/or entertaining gameplay?"

By all accounts except for about two people who are complaining te answer is "yes." It makes you plan your time (much like Dwarf Fortress, Cataclysm DDA, Unreal World, and other challenging survival sims PZ is trying to emulate). It also increases difficulty in a "fair" way (unfair ways being things out of player control like increasing zombie strength or speed).

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I don't think anyone questions that someone would get winded in a real life situation like that. The real question that needs to be asked and debated is, "Does it make for good and/or entertaining gameplay?"

Yep, I hear ya - obviously many things in the game are adjusted for the sake of gameplay etc, but although it'd be great to make the run from Muldraugh to West Point without breaking a sweat, (man, can't WAIT for vehicles!), I don't have an issue with my character getting moderate exertion after sprinting several blocks etc...although really need to have a few more play-throughs to get a true feel I guess....

 

I'm sure the Devs will take everyone's comments on board, with changes as big as they've made, there's always going to be a bit of fine-tuning required.

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(those people :P we simply cannot seem to stop people from swinging their bat around their heads frantically no matter what we do :P)

'No matter what you do'? The game doesn't even give the player any feedback to let them know they are charging a swing.
If people can't be arsed to read the incredibly short tips that pop up EVERY GAME at least one time in your PZ career then I don't really feel bad for them. You can lead a horse to water…
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This feels way too aggressive for me. I've said my piece about making a more hands-on tutorial and making it unable to be skipped the first time or at least harder to skip over than the survival guide.

 

I'm sure it will work out, regardless. I have faith in the devs to get it just right.

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Clutchin' at straws now... I did consider I may need some kind of text to better serve say the player noticing an NPC look a bit suspicious or nervous or whatever.

stawclutching.jpg

 

 

+1000 for this type of flavour text/status text in the bottom right corner!

 

It's small enough it doesn't affect immersion, and I think will really help to clear up some moments as to "what just happened".

 

Examples,

  • How you sustained that wound/injury
  • If you notice the weather changing or starting to get colder/give the player tips on mechanics the player cant visually see (outdoorsman or other traits could tie into these!)
  • The water pressure seems to be dropping, or the you see the power/lights starting to wane and flicker.
  • Hell there's lots of potential with this - you could even tie it into the smell system, but for the player to use, stuff burning, etc

 

I see it being almost like a combat log or diary? IMO The more info given to the player, the better. These changes would be great to have as everything becomes more complex and game mechanics/items become more intertwined, but its not something needed right this second.

 

Also, as mentioned, I think having a mechanic where if a zombie has a neighbor zombie in a tile next to him, and if he attacks a running player, there should be an increased chance to "grab" or "slow" the player. This grabbing or slowing mechanic is already in game (Ive definitely slowed down out of nowhere while running into zombies) but I think if tied into the new 'clumping' mechanic could make "run-bys" a thing of the past, forcing players to give zombies at least a 1 tile berth when running past a group of more than 2 or 3 of them.

 

It would be more balanced as it would simulate a "throng" of zombies moving about - where its much harder to keep an eye on EVERY limb and object, raising the chance to be slowed. 

 

(Maybe have the players panic level tie into their chance to be slowed, as the panic seems to rise with large groups of zombies so maybe the two mechanics could be used together to simulate what was described above)

 

Would be fun as players too, as they will have to really shoot for the gaps - only to have the gaps close and reform as zombies move.

 

 

Either way, good job pz team so far, it's looking great.

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I think the problem with increasing the grab distance for the zombies (they already will if you're close) is that you're going to run into them grabbing you at ranges bigger than their animations suggest, which could be confusing or frustrating for players.

However I do agree it might could use some tweaking; I'm all for it as long as it can be done in such a way that's still clear for the player and "fair".

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Game is very lenient already, rather then have them grab or claw you just give them more of a physical presence so you can't as easily just walk through them. I am all for actually thinking about where you heard the zombies and moving through the openings, but at the moment I can pretty much walk in a mostly straight line past all of them.

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(those people :P we simply cannot seem to stop people from swinging their bat around their heads frantically no matter what we do :P)

'No matter what you do'? The game doesn't even give the player any feedback to let them know they are charging a swing.
If people can't be arsed to read the incredibly short tips that pop up EVERY GAME at least one time in your PZ career then I don't really feel bad for them. You can lead a horse to water…

 

A tooltip popup that gives little information (it doesn't even tell you whether you still charge while holding down ctrl and moving) is not a substitute for the game providing actual feedback. You want a game to be intuitive.

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Quick question while were talking about proper melee killing of zombies.

 

I always use charged attacks, unless I'm frantically trying to push away zombies. Now, something I'm not sure on, do charged attacks do anything to downed or crawling zombies? I always spam attacks on them to keep them from getting up, and when I have tried taking time to do a charged attack, it didn't one shot them, making it feel wasteful.

 

So is there any advantage at all for charging attacks on downed/crawler zombies?

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So far I'm enjoying the new exertion system, it's a step toward the right direction. It does still need some balancing tho !

I often find myself moderatly exhausted after 4~5 kills at level 1 accuracy with the corresponding weapon, and I'm holding my swings properly and timing them right. I mainly noticed it with the crowbar and golfclub, as the bat seems way more effective and require less swings. I almost broke a brand new golfclub on a group of 5 zeds, some weapons might feel a bit unreliable as their exertion/damage reward isn't worth it. I've read somewhere that might probably be a bug as it's not how it's supposed to work.

Also, resting and doing nothing else [speed forwarding] is kind of dull imo. Wouldn't it be possible to make it a "passive action" during which you'd be able to eat, read a book, cook a meal, maybe care for your wounds, drinking a glass of wine and smoking cigarets, use the resting time for something constructive-ish and non-physical instead of making it a "second sleep" ? I usually just take a one hour nap instead of resting as the interaction with the game is the same but sleep lets you recover from exhaustion as well.

About the ratio exertion / amount of zombies we can kill. It would be nice to see fighting taking less energy as you improve your accuracy in X type of weapons. Experience making you more precise and confident your hits should require less effort. would be nice to see something like (random-ish starting number) :
lvl 0, you can kill ~5 zombies before being moderately exhausted (based on a fully rested character with neutral traits)
lvl 1, you can kill ~10 zombies before being moderately exhausted (based on a fully rested character with neutral traits)
lvl 2, you can kill ~15 zombies before being moderately exhausted (based on a fully rested character with neutral traits)
lvl 3, you can kill ~20 zombies before being moderately exhausted (based on a fully rested character with neutral traits)
lvl 4, you can kill ~25 zombies ..... ..., ......, ..... ..... .. . ..., .... ..... ... .... .....
lvl 5, you can kill ~30 zombies

Another thought, the "Sprinting" traits should be replaced by a "Marathon" trait (or a brand new trait), and shouldn't modify the speed at which you run (or only veryyyy slightly) but the time/distance you can cover.
 

And last thought but undirectly related to exertion, the exhaustion moodlet sometimes comes up pretty early. I think some actions are more tiresome that they're supposed to be, like foraging or using the trowel for instance.  Tho the new "sleep for x hours" mechanic is pretty nice, I can take a one hour nap at mid day and go through the afternoon pretty smoothly exhaustion wise.


I'm about to try an utterly dangerous adventure : travelling from south-Muldraugh's Twiggy's to the residential part of the "mall area" way up north, during winter, avoiding the main road, with an insane amount of slow shamblers with pinpoint hearing and long memory. I'm gonna see how the exertion/exhaustion moodlets behave on dangerous long journeys. Tho I think I might freeze as I seem to have the bug that keeps me from crafting any firekit, I've read some posts mentioning it. But on a good note, I've a tent !


 

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Can't repeat "running through zombies." If one is close, I'm slowed down. If two-three are close, I'm their dinner unless I shove them away.

So yeah, if you're evading zombies, that's something else entirely to phasing right through them.

that's off-topic but, they could use a little grabbing speed buff imo, that would make evading the "nose to nose" situations and running through groups much harder.

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...Also, resting and doing nothing else [speed forwarding] is kind of dull imo. Wouldn't it be possible to make it a "passive action" during which you'd be able to eat, read a book, cook a meal, maybe care for your wounds, drinking a glass of wine and smoking cigarets, use the resting time for something constructive-ish and non-physical instead of making it a "second sleep". I usually just take a one hour nap instead of resting as the interaction with the game is the same but sleep lets you recover from exhaustion as well....

 

Not a bad idea Deprav, although if you're having a quick rest to "catch your breath", not sure having a cigarette would be the best idea...  :D

 

I wonder, if instead of manually having to "fast forward" the rest break, we could have options of amount of time, like you do for sleep, eg:

Rest - 10 minutes, Rest - 15 minutes....Rest - 30 minutes etc? 

 

Off topic:

Talking about skill books - could we please remove the "boredom" penalty when reading a skill book?

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Locked framerate is set to 30.  I'm playing a new sandbox game (started today with build 30.8) with proper zombies set, everything unchanged except for day length, which I set to 2 hours.  No mods at the moment.  My character's stats are Strong, Athletic, Short Sighted, Light Drinker, Prone to Illness, and Hypochondriac.  I've managed to kill 22 zombies on the first day using a baseball bat.  I'm not certain, but I think windows are a bigger threat :P.  There were two zombies I was able to kill while moderately exhausted, one shambler and on fast shambler, though I haven't tried to kill more as of yet.  

 

My character became tired while resting, not sure if this is intentional and it's not that big of deal to me personally.  But my moderate exhaustion disappeared before the bar filled.  Am I correct in assuming this is because I was not fully exhausted?  

 

Zombies seem to be much more aware of the player than in previous versions. They often notice me more quickly than I notice them (knowing me this would probably be pretty accurate) and from further away than they used to.

 

I think it's not quick enough, in the sense that if this were actually me trying to smash the skulls of 22 undead people with a baseball bat I would get more exhausted at a quicker rate.  I'm sure some others would disagree.  This build appears more realistic than previously, where I killed over 300 zombies in a matter of 6 days using a bat.  In a short matter of time the zombies became not-so-threatening because, as others have stated, it was relatively easy to take down a large mass of them if given the space. As of right now I think the new exhaustion system is pretty good, but I'll be playing with it a lot more to try and get a better feel for it.

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From EVERY playthrough/twitch I watched, people ALWAYS run, that is their main problem with endurance..

 

An average joe will run 30min before getting exhausted, trust me, it's even more than that in the game. But then, they run 30-40min, and fight 2-3 zombies, and become first level of exhausted (it's not a so bad thing, you can still manage to kill zombies with it), and then they are "wtf? system broken!", do it one day, go run 30min and do 20min workout, seriously, tell me you're not exhausted then and don't need at least 1h rest before doing it again.

 

Running is bad in a zombie apocalypse anyway, you should always be careful, by walking you won't be using your endurance, remember that ;)

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 do it one day, go run 30min and do 20min workout, seriously, tell me you're not exhausted then and don't need at least 1h rest before doing it again.

 

Running is bad in a zombie apocalypse anyway, you should always be careful, by walking you won't be using your endurance, remember that ;)

 

I can run 5 hours, swim 10 and still beat up 12 people at once with my feet and hands tied together... So I'm the exception. ;)

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 do it one day, go run 30min and do 20min workout, seriously, tell me you're not exhausted then and don't need at least 1h rest before doing it again.

 

Running is bad in a zombie apocalypse anyway, you should always be careful, by walking you won't be using your endurance, remember that ;)

 

I can run 5 hours, swim 10 and still beat up 12 people at once with my feet and hands tied together... So I'm the exception. ;)

 

*Gets rope*

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do it one day, go run 30min and do 20min workout, seriously, tell me you're not exhausted then and don't need at least 1h rest before doing it again.

30 minutes running and 20 minutes lifting is almost exactly a gym session for me, and I don't have the luxury of sitting idle for an hour after I'm done. If I did, though, I wouldn't be so exhausted as to require complete rest without even the ability to cook, or clean, or read a book, or reorganise my shelves, or whatever.

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From EVERY playthrough/twitch I watched, people ALWAYS run, that is their main problem with endurance..

Running is bad in a zombie apocalypse anyway, you should always be careful, by walking you won't be using your endurance, remember that ;)

 

The reason I used to always run was to level up sprinting.   But if we can't run except in emergencies how else can we level it up?

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From EVERY playthrough/twitch I watched, people ALWAYS run, that is their main problem with endurance..

Running is bad in a zombie apocalypse anyway, you should always be careful, by walking you won't be using your endurance, remember that ;)

 

The reason I used to always run was to level up sprinting.   But if we can't run except in emergencies how else can we level it up?

 

Don't think this changes that . . . just makes it less likely to happen within the first hour of play. ;)

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From EVERY playthrough/twitch I watched, people ALWAYS run, that is their main problem with endurance..

Running is bad in a zombie apocalypse anyway, you should always be careful, by walking you won't be using your endurance, remember that ;)

The reason I used to always run was to level up sprinting. But if we can't run except in emergencies how else can we level it up?

Same. It's probably not worth investing effort into levelling up sprinting anymore. I can't think of very many situations in the game where you'd want to waste energy running, other than in very short bursts whilst kiting.
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Same. It's probably not worth investing effort into levelling up sprinting anymore. I can't think of very many situations in the game where you'd want to waste energy running, other than in very short bursts whilst kiting.

 

Yes, I cannot imagine running at twice the normal rate of speed and covering more distance for the same amount of energy can be helpful. It's just not worth it.

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From EVERY playthrough/twitch I watched, people ALWAYS run, that is their main problem with endurance..

Running is bad in a zombie apocalypse anyway, you should always be careful, by walking you won't be using your endurance, remember that ;)

The reason I used to always run was to level up sprinting. But if we can't run except in emergencies how else can we level it up?

Same. It's probably not worth investing effort into levelling up sprinting anymore. I can't think of very many situations in the game where you'd want to waste energy running, other than in very short bursts whilst kiting.

 

 

Sprinting helps a lot. The map is huge, do you really want to walk everywhere? I personally usually make one or two trips between West Point and Muldraugh during a lenghty run and even with sprinting that journey takes about 2 in-game days :S

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