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Durability Realism+Repair


Gerodial

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I do understand the need for a reduction in durability.  The story of how you died, I get it.

 

However, there are several items which degrade far far too quickly if we want to talk about realism.

 

The Axe is the first and really the most important.  My father has had the same Axe since I have been alive (I am 42).  The polish that was on the wood handle is gone.  The wood has been worn so smooth that it is actually a little slippery.  It has chopped enough wood for the polish of the wood to be gone, and the wood underneath to be worm smooth from the action of his hands.  It has no cracks or chips.  I would feel comfortable say that it could split the heads of thousands of zombies and be fine.  It would need only to be sharpened for better effect.  With that in mind, I also think that if the handle became damaged it would be a very very short term fix (A swing or two) and it would not be repairable unless a new handle could be made.

 

The Baseball Bat: This item I think is a little too fragile.  It should last a little longer than it does, but I do not know exactly how much longer.  Basically I would change the durability loss to match what it is being used for.  Breaking down a door, big loss.  Breaking a window, almost no loss.  Bashing a Zed, little to no loss.

 

The Spiked Bat: I would think the durability of this should be lowered even more.  For the same reason that both the bat and ax should be increased.  It is the integrity of the wood that is the question.  Drive a nail through a bat and it is going to split.  The process of making ax handles and Bats is similar and the polish and shaping is what makes them strong.  I am also not entirely sure that a nail or two would do that much more damage.

 

The Crowbar:  This should be indestructible.  Having used them many times, I have never encountered anything more severe than chipped paint.  It would make for the most part a terrible weapon for accuracy, but it would never ever break on the head of a Zombie.  Not EVER.

 

Firearms:  Durability is another issue here.  As well as maintenance.  Clean it, care for it, largely indestructible.  However, if you do not clean it or maintain it, is does not simply stop working most times.  It explodes and kills you.  Again to refer to my father, he has had the same double barrel shot gun since he was a teenager.  It is one of the finest firearms ever made, and that is something I think that may be a bit too much to manage for Dev's to start throwing in this kind of weapon brand and so on.  However, it is well maintained, cleaned after every use.  Maintenance should be easy.  Breakage should be terrible.  After more than 50-60 shots, without cleaning I think several modern firearms become dangerous things.

 

I know it is late in the game for suggestions but realism seems to be very important to developers and players alike.  That is why I have made this suggestion.

 

 

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+1 to these suggestions

It would be nice to see a sort of "inspect object" menu, which would be similar to the player's health menu, where a player would be able to see what's wrong with their item (dull axe head, split axe handle, broken trigger on pistol, hole in bag, etc)

 

Gun kits would be neat, as well as gun pieces.
There are a couple mods that expand on the idea of gun kits and pieces, as well as bullet making.

Also expanding on this should be a "zoom/aiming" system someone mentioned a little bit ago on the forums.
Essentially, the player is able to focus their shot where their cursor is, which would make firearms a little more flexible in terms of accurate aiming (i.e. shoot from a story above a zombie/player by focusing the cursor over the target)

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Realism must be balanced against gameplay. You're right that things break in PZ much more quickly than they would in real life, but there's a deliberate time dilation going on in the game that makes it both more playable and more of a challenge. The flip side of this is, for example, the ability to grow crops much faster in the game than in real life.

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I agree. Some items are just not breakable, or atleast get diminished by using them for their intention. And yes, a crowbar would never break, I've pried some rediculous things open/apart at my home and haven't done anything to the bar. The crowbar itself is 40+ years old.

 

The same goes with the Axe, my father has been splitting wood with the same Axe since I was 5. I'm 27 now, and the axe minus a few sharpenings (out of pure reason just to split wood easier) is still the same axe it was.

 

Firearms are the same, and some need less maintenance than others. All need oiled regularly (every 6 months or so) or if you have been out in the rain. The actual mechanical bits rarely need any fixing. This is in reference to family owned firearms, be it breakdown shotguns, rifles, pistols, revolvers. These items are meant to last forever, with routine maintenance, and the possibility of replacing a firing pin ever 5,000 - 10,000 rounds. How often have we ever fired more than 500 rounds in a game. When I go shooting I usually put 2-300 rounds down range out of my handgun, I may clean it, I may not, the gun always fires as long as I do my bi yearly maintenance.

 

The Zeds are more difficult, they are acting more real. I know the game is suppose to be hard, but no reason to penalize us on things that are un validated. Florin, they also recently increased crop growing time (While decreasing maintenance).

 

This is one thing that has always bothered me in games, and zed games, unnessecary degredation of items.

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There's no such thing as indestructible...

http://youtu.be/yLpnQQx30GI?t=2m41s

A crowbar example:

http://youtu.be/z_AcLCGJ1sU?t=48s

Here's things breaking.

Google "broken crowbar." I'm sure you'll find results, even if it's relatively rare.

Guess what: all tools have different levels of quality and maintenance. Just because you or members of your family have something that could be deemed a working antique, doesn't necessarily mean the game should, particularly if they're being used for improper tasks. ;)

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Florin, they also recently increased crop growing time (While decreasing maintenance).

They only increased it by about 10 hours per growth stage. You can still grow a crop of potatoes in 24 days. This was a balance tweak - they aren't going for realism with how long it takes to grow food, else it'd make farming highly impractical, just as if they made most weapons realistically durable, you'd never have to worry about replacing most of them, which would make the game much easier.

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There's no such thing as indestructible...

http://youtu.be/yLpnQQx30GI?t=2m41s

A crowbar example:

http://youtu.be/z_AcLCGJ1sU?t=48s

Here's things breaking.

Google "broken crowbar." I'm sure you'll find results, even if it's relatively rare.

Guess what: all tools have different levels of quality and maintenance. Just because you or members of your family have something that could be deemed a working antique, doesn't necessarily mean the game should, particularly if they're being used for improper tasks. ;)

 

 

And I could counter with something like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSrlvqrZQKY

 

However, I understand the need to keep you looking and moving throughout the game; it doesn't have to be the need to keep looking for new weapons, food yes, but the need to carry 2 Axes because you know one will break after splitting 50 skulls just seems silly. I like saying, you are my Axe, I've had you since the start, we've slayed many of zombies, and opened many a door. I could see it getting dull and maybe needing a sharpen on a wet stone or equivalent. I don't think you could break a crowbar though after hitting even hundreds of zeds in the head.

 

And Florin, I think it would be fantastic if farming were more realistic. Plant your Tomatos in Late may, Start harvisting late June, early July, and Harvest through Beginnning of September. I'm in West Virginia, similar zones to Kentucky (its probably warmer there). From a single tomato plant this year I harvested over 60 tomatos. All I did was plant them in well fertalized soil and I didn't even have to water them, and they did fantastic. Same with peppers, and strawberries (Which I harvested from May-August; they also come back every year and you don't need to replant these.) from a single plant.

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And I could counter with something like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSrlvqrZQKY

 

I'm sorry but that doesn't counter anything Enigma said. :???:

all tools have different levels of quality and maintenance.

 

 

It's an item used for 5 minutes to do what it's meant to do. I'm sure even that knife has a breaking point somewhere. That's a knife specially built to withstand that sort of usage. It has not been designed to be miss-hit on pavement, when trying to crack zombie skulls. All the current durability system does is, it makes slight concessions with realism to keep the game more active. Now if it should, is completely opinion related and my opinion is that it's quite fun the way it is. But there's no reason for anyone to say that things are unbreakable (which is a great movie btw).

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And Florin, I think it would be fantastic if farming were more realistic. Plant your Tomatos in Late may, Start harvisting late June, early July, and Harvest through Beginnning of September. I'm in West Virginia, similar zones to Kentucky (its probably warmer there). From a single tomato plant this year I harvested over 60 tomatos. All I did was plant them in well fertalized soil and I didn't even have to water them, and they did fantastic. Same with peppers, and strawberries (Which I harvested from May-August; they also come back every year and you don't need to replant these.) from a single plant.

You can always increase the amount of time it takes for crops to grow in a sandbox game if you want to give it a try. I have, and found it made farming take too long to be of much benefit. My first harvest was almost a complete loss thanks to a painfully long period of DWF attrition.

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My ten cents - biggest problem is balance. As it is, a more durable axe would become a jedi lightsaber of perfection - NOT balanced.

 

but

 

new endurance system is coming with long term endurance effects and new animations are being drawn. This is when melee weapons can be fixed.

Crowbar - can be unbreakable avg weapon, not as good as a bat and a HUGE endurance penalty for swinging which is natural if it's of any decent size

 

Axe - 10 times as durable as now, but depending on skill (or rather lack of it) and not having a strong perk it might get jammed into a zombie body in a separate animation, stunlocking you and z for 5 seconds (and other Zs in the area are free to use your stunlock) and draining endurance severely. Also generally high endurance cost for swinging.

Also a great part of realism could be achieved by implementing a minor chance of handle broken condition occuring, not tied to main durability bar.

 

Frying pan - we all know that there are thin metal + teflon and plastic ones, and there are heavy cast iron ones. One would break vs live human's skull without severe trauma, another could be used to play tennis using z heads for hours. So complete freedom of choice in balance and atm it's quite good, though i'd suggest them starting out with random max durability proportional to weight.

 

Baseball bat, methinks should be 4 times as durable as it is, but due to the nature of wood - it would have fixed crit chance to insta break, averaging out at being able to last 2 times as long as now.

 

And lastly the hammer - completely no durability but a bit lower damage, above average endurance price to swing and small jam chance on every decently damaging hit.

 

Imho this would make these weapons on one hand closer to realistic durability, but on the other hand preventing their lame abuse by players. But it really needs melee lock animations. Could be one animation for all weapon types - just holding on to the handle and pushing-pulling a Z back and forth a few times.

 

P.S. just played a bit of another survival game - dead state. (imho crap until they implement random and respawning stuff) - but that game had a nice weapon - the pipe wrench. Heavy one-two handed short melee weapon that does good damage, does not jam in flesh and bone and is night indestructible but.. contributes to the noise level - it is made of several parts that are never attached too tight, so when you just walk with it, it makes minor noise, and when you hit with it - the noise is loud enough  to be comparable to broken glass.

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And I could counter with something like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSrlvqrZQKY

 

I'm sorry but that doesn't counter anything Enigma said. :???:

all tools have different levels of quality and maintenance.

 

 

It's an item used for 5 minutes to do what it's meant to do. I'm sure even that knife has a breaking point somewhere. That's a knife specially built to withstand that sort of usage. It has not been designed to be miss-hit on pavement, when trying to crack zombie skulls. All the current durability system does is, it makes slight concessions with realism to keep the game more active. Now if it should, is completely opinion related and my opinion is that it's quite fun the way it is. But there's no reason for anyone to say that things are unbreakable (which is a great movie btw).

 

 

Oi vey. Its hard to convey what is in your head, and get it into writing. This will be my final bit on weapons.

 

The force needed to break a crowbar over top of a human skull, or hitting a door far exceeds anything that a human can muster. I've stood on these things, jumped on them, kicked them to break loose things far beyond the force needed to crush a skull.

 

Can you break a crowbar. Yes. I'm certain if you are trying to pry something that has a higher breaking point than the material of the crowbar it will crack. Safes are not Skulls.

 

The Ability to have a weapon and maintain it. If I break my handle on my axe, I will find a new one, or fashion one out of a stick. The head of the axe should be fine, and I should not have to scrap the whole thing because the handle is broke. (Thousands of logs split and the one I have is still fine)

 

I wish we could just steer away of maybe scrap this weapon, to let me find stuff to repair it. It seems like a fair compromise, it keeps you moving, and makes more sense than the system does.

 

As far as farming, a plant should take longer to grow, but when you harvest it the entire plant should not be scrapped, it should have maybe 4-5 days cooling time before you can re harvest again. Crop times should be between End May - Early September. Frost would kill most crops, bare spinach and peas (which are more cold resistant.)

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I wish we could just steer away of maybe scrap this weapon, to let me find stuff to repair it. It seems like a fair compromise, it keeps you moving, and makes more sense than the system does.

In the current system it's not difficult to stick with one weapon and repair it with wood glue or duct tape when necessary. I've been in situations where the game simply refused to give me more than one axe, and I ended up slathering dozens of bottles worth of glue all over my prized axe just to keep it functional. Of course zombies drop axes and bats but not supplies for repairing, so it's senseless not to replace a used weapon with a new one when given the opportunity.

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The devs are trying to veer this game away from stable life in stable base right into 'fan's been hit hard' situation. So any repairs, as far as I understood, should take extensive scavenging or they won't be implemented no matter the realism. Okay, will try to rework like this...

 

Crowbar and hammer still unbreakable but heavy and jammable. That should be harsh enough to really make one consider odds.

 

Axe - a couple of glues, no tapes. Higher carpentry lets use either 1-2 wedges (that need being scavenged) or 5 nails/screws and a plank to repair the axe to random durability from 1/3 to full. Using minimal carpentry and nails/screws gives a pure random roll, while using carpentry master and wedges adds another guaranteed 1/3d to the roll. On breaking there's a random chance to get back nails or wedges, but having any negative moods and zombies around gives guaranteed substraction from the odds up to guaranteed 0. ah and the broken axe has a random chance of being teleported up to 20 tiles away or till an obstacle. (that happens, trust me) - these repair methods reward skill, but require perishable supplies that have other uses.

 

Sledge actually can be non repairable - imagine it has a modern handle yet gets broken and the hole is too thin for a wooden one to hold reliably. (won't be telling you that another sledge and a metal pipe can be used to create an ugly but immortal handle, oh well, game balance)

 

Golf thing can have twice the durability but no repair option and loss of up to half damage along being damaged due to bending.

 

P.S. side question - what's the english word for prison made sharp object out of spoons etc? Using recipe to turn spoons and forks into butter knives using a stone, but could really use the poroper name for it.

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