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How Will Vehicles Change Your Playstyle?


BayCon

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With the public release of the Vehicles tech test build, I've become pretty excited about the near future of Zomboid. I was staring at the game map thinking about new places to play and how the vehicles will affect my playstyle... when I came across the mall. Then I started thinking:

 

What if I pulled up to the mall in MP with a squad of peeps and had them on an assembly line carting things to our squad of cars?

Cars attract an unholy amount of zombies from even just a little bit of movement, what if I had one of my squad mates run to the other side of the mall and fire off a gun to make looting easier?

or...

Oh my god, the hallways in the mall are wide as crap... What if I broke 4 walls into one side of the mall with a sledgehammer and actually pulled the car in and had squad members ducking into stores and throwing things in the trunk? There are a lot of zombies around the mall, so how fun would that be to be desperately filling the trunk of the car before it's too late, and then making a daring near-death escape with all of the loot? 

 

So much fun to be had in just this one area. How do you think Vehicles will change your playstyle? What new experiences do you think you will have? I'm interested in knowing. :)

Edited by BayCon
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Cars will make me hope they include the ability to sleep in your vehicle. Kind of like sleeping in a tent only without the sudden, unavoidable bites.

You know those light green strips between forests? Those will become my highways, linking cabin to cabin with only a short hike needed to access Cooking: 10 vegetarian lasagna.

 

I will become Ironman.

Hyundai-Veloster-Zombie-Survival-Machine

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I will be on the outskirts, mostly near the farms. Nice, wide open areas for building and way less zombies than my closer-to-city houses. Hopefully the trunk space will be nice and large. You'd be surprised what you can fit inside a basic Honda Civic, let alone the space an Ambulance can have.

 

Be really good for Hydrocraft. 

 

Possibly do the Walking Dead Horde thing outside of Alexandria and lure massive hordes outside the city, turn around in a wide circle and get back to the town.

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4 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

Cars can also act as barriers for zombies.

 

Much better than log walls, ignoring the dropping from the sky on re-load.

 

Yeah I had thought about that and tried it, but the massive hordes they attract made it hard for me to even get the car in position in time before they caught up lol. On one hand, I'm looking forward to new challenges, but on the other hand, I'm worried that they will not reduce the radius of their meta sound, and they will continue to bring the entire city down on your location. :P

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22 minutes ago, Zombadger said:

Cars will make me hope they include the ability to sleep in your vehicle. Kind of like sleeping in a tent only without the sudden, unavoidable bites.

You know those light green strips between forests? Those will become my highways, linking cabin to cabin with only a short hike needed to access Cooking: 10 vegetarian lasagna.

 

I will become Ironman.

Hyundai-Veloster-Zombie-Survival-Machine

 

 

You haven't played the public test build? You can sleep in your car!

As for the wide open fields, I hope they implement slower travel over dirt and grass for sedans, and allow trucks to continue at a normal speed.

 

12 minutes ago, Soul Filcher said:

Visiting all the warehouses to get an axe will be faster.

 

I wouldn't say "easier"... Those things attract zombies like crazy. However, it will be more beneficial in some ways than walking!

 

9 minutes ago, Damien Darkside said:

I will be on the outskirts, mostly near the farms. Nice, wide open areas for building and way less zombies than my closer-to-city houses. Hopefully the trunk space will be nice and large. You'd be surprised what you can fit inside a basic Honda Civic, let alone the space an Ambulance can have.

 

Be really good for Hydrocraft. 

 

Possibly do the Walking Dead Horde thing outside of Alexandria and lure massive hordes outside the city, turn around in a wide circle and get back to the town.

2

 

Omg you guys haven't played the public test build, have you?! The trunk weight is 200 in sedans! Yes, over 10 times that of your average bag! I haven't tried the vans or trucks, so I don't know if they're larger or not. Though everything in the test build is subject to change. :) 

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1 hour ago, BayCon said:

-snip-

Nope! I switched back to public release when a game that was being recorded for a personal project got eaten by an update.

Admittedly, it was my fault for not I Will Back Up My Save,  but if I wanted to get this thing done it required a stable version.

 

Tomorrow, I play with cars. :3

Edited by Zombadger
IWBUMS, it's a way of life.
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Well, other than making certain faraway or isolated places (like the Dixie Dinner, the shacks that have wells, or those lonesome trailers you sometime find in the middle of nowhere) into viable safehouses, it'll also make the choice of the spawning point more of a matter of choice than a matter of ''spawn next to the place with axes''. Even if you spawn at WP, you can still go all the way to Rosewood.

 

Beyond that, I can't say yet how it will affect my style, specially concerning I still have no idea of the individual capabilities of each car. For instance, as a former deliver dude, I know you can pretty much LIVE in the back of a stepvan (as long as you aren't very fond of electrodomestics beyond a mini fridge, a radio, a laptop and a George Foreman Grill), but I'm sure such a functionality will not be possible in PZ. Still, if any kind of RVs were added to PZ and came with all the capabilities of the real life thing, I'd probably ditch my standard house base and live as far as possible from the cities in the No-Zeds-Lands that are the forests.

 

Only time will tell....

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21 minutes ago, Blake81 said:

Well, other than making certain faraway or isolated places (like the Dixie Dinner, the shacks that have wells, or those lonesome trailers you sometime find in the middle of nowhere) into viable safehouses, it'll also make the choice of the spawning point more of a matter of choice than a matter of ''spawn next to the place with axes''. Even if you spawn at WP, you can still go all the way to Rosewood.

 

Beyond that, I can't say yet how it will affect my style, specially concerning I still have no idea of the individual capabilities of each car. For instance, as a former deliver dude, I know you can pretty much LIVE in the back of a stepvan (as long as you aren't very fond of electrodomestics beyond a mini fridge, a radio, a laptop and a George Foreman Grill), but I'm sure such a functionality will not be possible in PZ. Still, if any kind of RVs were added to PZ and came with all the capabilities of the real life thing, I'd probably ditch my standard house base and live as far as possible from the cities in the No-Zeds-Lands that are the forests.

 

Only time will tell....

We need one of these bad boys.

78Chieftain1.jpg

Edited by xXSly_WolfyXx
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Love the mall idea :D I'm gonna have to go there just to check out the parking lot now, as I always imagined it being so much cooler when full of cars :)

And it's already changed my playstyle in ways that I love :) I got a taste of things being this way with nolans car mods but this has so much more depth and shine to it. Like others mentioned, it opens up new places to call home as well as, for me, I enjoy the freedom to go on expeditions/adventures with them :)

The biggest change is that now instead of the hardware store in West Point being my first target, I go for gas stations and good loot spots along the way between them. I slowly fill up the car with any gas cans I can find and fill up all the empties before I move on to the next one.

Not to mention, the cars plus the annotated maps make for a fun kind of quest system where I find myself running around between looting when I'm near a place I have an annotated map for :)
 

3 hours ago, BayCon said:

I'm worried that they will not reduce the radius of their meta sound, and they will continue to bring the entire city down on your location.


It seems a little loud to me too. There are certain sounds I wish were louder on the map (like breaking windows seems insanely quiet and doesn't attract zeds that are even right around the corner) but this one seems over the top. It feels like I'm blasting off a shotgun the whole time I'm driving lol

Cars should definitely attract all the zombies on your screen at full zoom out, if not even a bit more, but right now it seems slightly too high, in my opinion.

Still makes for a fun time though :D lol, Been loving this tech test build :)
 

Edited by Kuren
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15 minutes ago, Kuren said:

Love the mall idea :D I'm gonna have to go there just to check out the parking lot now, as I always imagined it being so much cooler when full of cars :)

And it's already changed my playstyle in ways that I love :) I got a taste of things being this way with nolans car mods but this has so much more depth and shine to it. Like others mentioned, it opens up new places to call home as well as, for me, I enjoy the freedom to go on expeditions/adventures with them :)

The biggest change is that now instead of the hardware store in West Point being my first target, I go for gas stations and good loot spots along the way between them. I slowly fill up the car with any gas cans I can find and fill up all the empties before I move on to the next one.

Not to mention, the cars plus the annotated maps make for a fun kind of quest system where I find myself running around between looting when I'm near a place I have an annotated map for :)
 


It seems a little loud to me too. There are certain sounds I wish were louder on the map (like breaking windows seems insanely quiet and doesn't attract zeds that are even right around the corner) but this one seems over the top. It feels like I'm blasting off a shotgun the whole time I'm driving lol

Cars should definitely attract all the zombies on your screen at full zoom out, if not even a bit more, but right now it seems slightly too high, in my opinion.

Still makes for a fun time though :D lol, Been loving this tech test build :)
 

I feel like attracting all zeds at full zoom is a little bit much, Most cars really aren't that loud.

Edited by xXSly_WolfyXx
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8 hours ago, xXSly_WolfyXx said:

I feel like attracting all zeds at full zoom is a little bit much, Most cars really aren't that loud.


Good point. I feel like it should still be challenging though, as if they hear the hum from down the block and are attracted to it.

Maybe a good balance would be that the larger trucks are loud like that but the smaller compact cars are quieter. That way you have the choice of more stealth but less storage space for looting or more space but less stealth with the larger cars and trucks.

Edit: It should be noted that I play on windowed 1600 x 900. Not sure if the zoom out is bigger when the resolution is higher but that's what I'm basing this statement off of.
 

Edited by Kuren
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15 minutes ago, Kuren said:


Good point. I feel like it should still be challenging though, as if they hear the hum from down the block and are attracted to it.

Maybe a good balance would be that the larger trucks are loud like that but the smaller compact cars are quieter. That way you have the choice of more stealth but less storage space for looting or more space but less stealth with the larger cars and trucks.

That sounds like a great idea.

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1 hour ago, BoogieMan said:

Not much at the moment,  it's like they're rolling shotgun blasts when it comes to attracting zombies. Hordes of zombies in a short very amount of time, flipped my big UPS delivery looking truck upside down.

 
 
 
 
 

 

LOL. I was thinking of a way to describe them to people who haven't tried the test build and "Rolling shotgun blasts" describes it perfectly. Between you and me, I'm afraid that they're gonna nerf these things so hard with noise attraction that they're just as useless to the skilled survivor as guns are in this game. The only purpose of guns in this game for me is drawing zombies away from a certain area. Have a photo or two. 

 

Screenshot (307).png

Wait, I actually took this photo? This was nothing compared to what I saw later... I barely got out of the driveway of the house behind me and already attracted those zeds.  My spawn house was one of the khaki ones on that street.

Edited by BayCon
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Screenshot (315).png

 

Ok, to give you some perspective on how many zeds I attracted by that time just by driving up the street with a car from the church parking lot beside me and looting the gas station for food and orange soda for like 15 - 30 seconds, Take the horde in front of my character, paste it behind me, and around the corner of the church as well, and about 1/3 of it into the gas station (indicated by the white arrow) in the top left corner of the screenshot. They just kept coming in, and I had to keep running around the driver's side of the car and leading them away because there were so many on that block. But this is STILL nothing compared to what I had amassed during that save a little later during my drive from Rosewood to West Point. Like, I slowed down to do that thing from that scene in The Walking Dead to assess just how many zombies were on my tail...

 

Related image

 

(which failed because the zombies in the game are not all conveniently going at one speed), but eventually it was like I was at the Million Man March, and by that time my framerate was murdered. I kept trying to outrun them so my character could sleep, but they were tracking me like it was a helicopter event. So, eventually I decided to see what would happen if I drove far then turned off my engine and went to sleep immediately, and I woke up to the biggest paparazzi in my life. I kept trying to get out with the car, but eventually, they flipped me up into the air like a pancake and sent me flying into the trees.

Edited by BayCon
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4 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

 

So many you can't move, your truck becoming a tomb?

Yeah, they seem to stop cars pretty easily and hitting a group of them doesn't seem to often kill them, so the hordes pile up even more since you don't thin the heard much at all as you go.

 

I had the same kind of truck, and I ran it into a crowd about that big, barely hurt any zombies and it literally flipped upside down and stayed on it's roof. Like you said, instant tomb. Sit in until you die of thirst/starve, or get out and get torn limb from limb in a gruesome crunchy death.

 

Cars are a death trap for you and anyone within a few blocks of you.

Edited by BoogieMan
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16 minutes ago, BoogieMan said:

Yeah, that seem to stop cars pretty easily. I had the same kind of truck, and I ran it into a crowd about that big, barely hurt any zombies and it literally flipped upside down and stayed on it's roof. Like you said, instant tomb.

 

Cars are a death trap for you and anyone within a few blocks of you.

 
 
 

 

Yeah dude, I'm too lazy to remember where I last said this. Shoot, it was probably in this very thread, but I'm gonna say it again. This is directed to both of you who I'm replying to right now. I'm afraid that in an attempt to balance these things, they're going to be one-purpose tools in their use just as guns are in this game. What's that one purpose (excluding the shotgun)? To manipulate the population of zombies. Can you take out hordes of zombies in this game with guns, yes, but is it worth the hundreds more you'll attract in doing so? In most cases, no.

 

I'm worried that cars will become the same way if they don't nerf the noise attraction. Can you use them to go from Point A to Point B in a smaller amount of time than you would on foot? Yes, but is it worth having the entire city (drive these things in West Point and it feels like the entire city is coming down on you) riding your bumper indefinitely? No.

 

It would be a real shame if all the waiting for this feature was for nothing because they were not viable tools in the end. Now, the only reason I'm pushing this so hard is because I know the developers have stuck to their guns (lame pun intended) on not adding suppressors to this game, so I'm worried they might not change the cars either. Now, this is a test build, so we'll see.

 

14 minutes ago, Blake81 said:

And I can't even imagine what must such a massive MASSIVE horde do to the performance of a mid-end PC...

 

Seriously, the noise needs a nerf.....

 

 
 
 

 

It's even worse for us poor people. I'm on a craptop and even in the last build, which doesn't suffer from performance issues, hordes this size drop me from 60 fps to 30 fps and below. At some point, it'll become an issue of balance and performance.

Edited by BayCon
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Yeah, zombies need locational damage.  Most of a car impacts I can't see killing a Z... but it's pretty hard to shamble after someone when one of your femurs is in twenty pieces.

 And the video highlights one of the reasons I don't play on the more dense horde difficulties:  If I'm hanging out in a place that had 1k people prior to the Z-outbreak ... and all the neighboring towns are similarly populated, there comes a point where you realize that literally everyone in the county is shambling down the street outside... and that completely blows my immersion out of the water.

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13 minutes ago, Storm6436 said:

Yeah, zombies need locational damage.  Most of a car impacts I can't see killing a Z... but it's pretty hard to shamble after someone when one of your femurs is in twenty pieces.

 And the video highlights one of the reasons I don't play on the more dense horde difficulties:  If I'm hanging out in a place that had 1k people prior to the Z-outbreak ... and all the neighboring towns are similarly populated, there comes a point where you realize that literally everyone in the county is shambling down the street outside... and that completely blows my immersion out of the water.

 
 

 

Are you suggesting we have more indoor zombies? I'm not sure how I'd feel about that. Although, it would be nice to have each house have a chance of having a broken window or two so we can draw the conclusion that some zombies broke out of their homes.

Edited by BayCon
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