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Seriously? No Non-Player Character Survivors in Single player mode?


DicheBach

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I've been on the rage side of this conversation before, it didn't go well. I've also been on the be patient side. But I think the main point is this - we didn't buy the game years ago for MP, Cars, or any of this other stuff.

 

We didn't buy a sandbox game, we bought a game that was a story about the zombie apocalypse. The early version I would call a tech demo had NPC's. That's what helped sell this game when I bought it on desura.

 

Then it felt like after all the problems they went through, we got the bait and switch once they redid it without any basic NPC's. 

 

I got over that feeling awhile ago (at least to the point of raging). I even found new ways to appreciate this game.

 

That being said, I think there are technical limitations to this game that make the devs wary of even approaching things like NPC's, Big Cities and other things of that magnitude. I worry that they might be in over their heads sometimes in regards to these grand ambitions and just hope that this is not all their procrastination at confronting something they are afraid won't work well.

 

Vehicles and animations are great and all....... even MP........... but I'm in it for single player, a campaign or story line with NPC's and not this sandbox crap.

 

I've heard very little recently or EVER about the direction of the single player other than radio broadcasts.

I don't need an ETA, but the public really would like to know whether or not TIS is up to the task, capable of the task and what the end goal is regarding these years old game ideas that some of us bought the game for.

 

I've been silent for a few years because I know how taboo NPC's are, so I generally only push for more about single player event systems in mapping. But have received little to no feedback even on that.

 

So, at this point we need some input as to what I said above - wtf is going on? Not when.

Edited by Capt_Paradox
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1 hour ago, Capt_Paradox said:

I've been on the rage side of this conversation before, it didn't go well. I've also been on the be patient side. But I think the main point is this - we didn't buy the game years ago for MP, Cars, or any of this other stuff.

 

We didn't buy a sandbox game, we bought a game that was a story about the zombie apocalypse. The early version I would call a tech demo had NPC's. That's what helped sell this game when I bought it on desura.

1

I doubt the game will ever be a linearly progressive narrative. Though the tl;dr page on the over-all idea of PZ was easy to miss back when the game first released, the game was billed as a sandbox (which K&B dropped you into), with almost no mention of the story. I missed it, too, and was pretty upset when MP started to be discussed more-openly. 

 

 https://web.archive.org/web/20110705075350/http://projectzomboid.com:80/blog/index.php/tldr-just-give-me-the-jist/

 

 

I'd have to go back to the old blogs and see if they discussed the story and expanding it (outside of the context of scripting mods and in-game events). But from what I remember, it was more of a "making your own story through what happens," something that PZ lacks, excepting a few specific ones. There's only so much you can do when you're the only actor, outside of MP or mods. 

 

But you know the reason it's not discussed. People will lose their shit and be spurned to a new level of hate, repeating the same attacks that go on now if TIS started talking about quest implementations or progressive story elements suddenly. It'd just be the new NPCs, just as happened with animations. Without either of those things done, it's shooting themselves in the foot to bring it up.

 

From reading the comments and suggestions we've received about the game over the years,  everyone has different priorities for what Project Zomboid should be. No matter what we work on, we'll let someone down. 

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Yeah, I was trying to be balanced about it. Because it's a great game, but it has even greater potential. 

 

What you just said has pretty much made me sad though, cause now I feel like I'll never get to see/experience what I wanted.

 

It also confuses me even more in regards to Fort Knox and the military...... I mean if there's no Single Player Narrative ....... Ugh..

 

 

Just sad. I wanted to see the Military roll into the game when they setup the quarantine zone, think things got under control. Then get overran and all that good stuff. Or as I nagged before, at least a event system for custom maps or scenario's would fill this void.

 

Thanks for the input. Still curious about the technical limitations and whether or not that has intimidated them which is why so many things get shelved besides the obviously stated reasons.

 

Kudo's to most people for keeping this conversation civil. It's a hard one to have without people just being a dick.

 

PS I still love PZ so no hard feelings intended. Just sad.

 

  • Meet other survivors who you can join forces with, trade with, undertake missions for, or fight with for resources. 

That's the part that won me over ^^^^

Edited by Capt_Paradox
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On 1/21/2018 at 5:28 PM, trombonaught said:

All else being said, I want to let you know that yours is a sentiment I am sure we have ALL been able empathize with at some point since getting into the game. As you can see, many people have weighed these thoughts before :P

 

I hope you're able to find some other charm in the game that might keep you engaged with it! Or maybe you'll find another NPC ai game to tide you over.

 

I've been enjoying the game immensely! Definitely have already "got my money's worth" and having played through 30 or 40 days or survivors living in Muldraugh I can see the beauty in their design.

 

Tried the Steam "survivors" mod and found the NPCs to be more of a burden than a benefit.

 

I am amazed that the game is as entertaining as it is with a solo survivor, which explains a lot. But I am still of the opinion that rudimentary ally NPC algorithms, on which slightly less rudimentary upgraded algorithms could be built, on which again sligthly less rudimentary upgraded algorithsm could be built . . . and so on, should have been priority number one at the very moment the decision was made to remove the original algorithms from compilation.

 

Obviously, 5+ years later, I'm a bit "late" to convince the developers of this view, and perhaps they are putting the finishing touches on the Zombie Apocalypse equivalent of Hal 9000 as we speak and will unveil a suite of allied NPC algorithms that truly harken in earnest to be hailed as "A.!." . . . As far as I can tell, there is no such thing and never has been. Most of the "neural network" and "machine learning" blah, de, blahs we hear about come from sources with ample ulterior motivation to lie about the little man in the control room pulling the strings. When Elon Musk's fabled Dota "A.I." is included in the .exe for the actual product and can be played without network connectivity in singleplayer mode I will be impressed.

 

As far as I'm aware, all so-called game "A.I." in existence "cheat," it is what the programmers/designers have to do to make them convincing. There is nothing wrong with that is there? When you are looking at your screen and your brain is registering a little friend sneaking around a trailer park in their underwear in the sweltering Kentucky summer heat, nail-spiked baseball bat raised high and ready, and you feel the tension  . . . you have already been hoodwinked by the slide show of pixels choreographed to respond precisely to your user inputs.

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On 1/22/2018 at 2:28 PM, Kim Jong Un said:

In that time that people were waiting for NPCs, the developers put in something relatively much more spectacular - Multiplayer, and about 5x the total map size.

 

I'm dedicated to building multiplayer communities and everything else they have added (vehicles are not a minor change and impact gameplay heavily) so as far as I know I have received more hours as-is for a cheap indie game than I would have with games that get a much easier time when it comes to fan complaints.

 

The way I see it, we've already received a solid game with solid gameplay either way. Even if NPCs take 10 years to come, I'll still have things to do until then.

 

That said, if they really buckled it into NPCs it would probably be done at the expense of neglecting just about everything else in the process. I don't know if you have seen how complex the map, building, farming, trapping and everything else in the game but the demand for NPCs that can interact with all of that, form their own communities, distinguish between threatening players and zombie as well as replicate some kind of dialogue to the players is pretty spectacular and would be a massive feat to accomplish.

 

I'm not saying 7 years wouldn't be enough to accomplish that, but everything else this small team has added and worked on justifies 7 years of paying staff with community testing. As a regular bug-hunter and tester, I know full well that half of the under-the-hood things they do for this game will go unnoticed and unappreciated, but development for the game has never stopped, and that's a fact.

 

Having got past my initial reaction of "WHAT!? No allied NPCs!?"  . . . I agree. They could call the game "done" just how it is right now and I think it is worth the price tag. It plays well, is engrossing and well done.

 

The only problem with multiplayer mode in most games is that (a) human beings live in different places, with different stages in Earth's circadian cycle and with different work/play/sleep schedules; (b) sometimes, one's fellow players are a down-right drag; (c) even when one's fellow players are not a drag, the "relationships" one develops around games are delicate, fragile and inherently troubled.

 

In sum, I prefer to avoid multiplayer and this is after spending many years engaging in many different forms of it. The best games have sufficient computer-opponents/challenges that humans (who admittedly are the most challenging of opponents) are unnecessary either as opponents or allies. Putting a multiplayer mode on top of THAT is golden in my opinion as it allows all users to get what they want. 

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17 hours ago, Livio Persemprio said:

Yes, npc development have probably halted a couple of times due to technical limitations, that's my guess as well, so what? They did the impossible already with the shittiest engine on earth. They even hired more professional people to try and beat those limitations, and i'm sure as hell they will. Game have ups and downs but it is one of those that will go somewhere

 

Have to say, given the app seems to be written in Lua, what they have pulled off already is quite impressive! The visual experience is PERFECTLY FINE just how it is, to the tune of 875,000 users who bought in in fact. Why they would feel any need to implement "3D" animations I cannot fathom . . .

 

Clearly, the folks who have created this are gamers, with a deep love of the full gamut of psychological and analytical experiences that games can evoke far more than any other entertainment media. I salute them for their cunning understanding of what it takes to make a "GOOD!" game and their success at it already.

 

But with all that said: the lack of ANY survivor non-player characters at all, is the biggest, most immediately obvious, and arguably glaring deficiency in the game. If by some stroke of magic I owned this IP and they were working for me, I would put full stop on every other aspect of development and devote 100% of all resources to planning and implementing a baseline NPC system, with a focus on (a) an extensible system which can be iteratively elaborated in future updates; but also (b) allows for some meaningful, enjoyable, not-annoying and balanced presence of other survivors in singleplayer mode as soon as possible and last (and most importantly) (c) a toggle button in the game setup panes "Play with NPC survivors?" ON/OFF (or perhaps toggles to determine the abundance, etc.

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2 minutes ago, DicheBach said:

given the app seems to be written in Lua

Actually its not. Its java. The lua aspect is kahlua, which is basically java pretending to be lua, which is slower then true lua, (and slower then natural java).

If real lua was used, I think it would not suffer alot of the performance issues it currently does.  But alot more development time would have had to go into writing wrappers for passing data between lua and java, where as kahlua probably saved craploads of time. Embedding actual lua can be a real pain I've found, especially for larger projects.

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1 minute ago, Fenris_Wolf said:

Actually its not. Its java. The lua aspect is kahlua, which is basically java pretending to be lua, which is slower then true lua, (and slower then natural java).

If real lua was used, I think it would not suffer alot of the performance issues it currently does.  But alot more development time would have had to go into writing wrappers for passing data between lua and java, where as kahlua probably saved craploads of time. Embedding actual lua can be a real pain I've found, especially for larger projects.

 

Neat! I did a few courses in Java but I got sucked in by C++ and that is what I spend my free time learning; still just a beginner but I should cross the threshold to "Journeyman" any time between 6 months from now and the day I die! :-D

 

Apart from a VERY tiny bit of tinkering with the computer mod (the one's which add "turtle" robots and which I forget the name of) in Tekkit Lite Minecraft, I have no real knowledge of lua.

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Just now, DicheBach said:

Apart from a VERY tiny bit of tinkering with the computer mod (the one's which add "turtle" robots and which I forget the name of) in Tekkit Lite Minecraft, I have no real knowledge of lua.

Its a wonderful language, extremely fast and efficient, and very easy to learn. All the fat has been trimmed, theres very few keywords and built in functions. When I started with lua, 2 hours was all that was needed to know pretty much everything about the core functions, keywords and syntax, except for the embedding in C++ part (In fairness though I had over a decade of development in other languages by then).

One of the drawbacks of having all the excess junk removed though means for some tasks that are simple in other languages, you have to code your own functions to do it. But some of the things you can pull off coding-wise using lua is just magical compared to other languages.

But ya...its worth learning if you have any experience with other languages.

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If you just bought the game, it is your fault for bringing an expectation that wasn't fulfilled. The store page tells you there aren't NPCs, the forums will tell you there aren't NPCs, youtube will show you there aren't NPCs...

 

It's not the devs fault that you didn't do any looking around.

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Quote
  • Planned Features:

  • The return of our PZ Stories mode that also serves as first ever tutorial actively trying to kill you at every turn. Kate and Baldspot return!
  • In-depth and varied NPC encounters driven in a persistent world, powered by a metagame system that turns each play-through into your very own zombie survival movie with emergent narrative gameplay.
  • Constant expansion of the countryside and cities around Muldraugh and West Point
  • Full wilderness survival systems, animals and hunting for food. 
  • More items, crafting recipes, weapons and gameplay systems
  • Steam Workshop and Achievements support

behind this petulant title, there is an idea, i think he would talk about order in wich features have been applied during these 7 years. When i bought this game, I was interested by current features, and accept to wait for this very interresting planned features. But the 2 lasts dots have received all focus. features who have no limits. ( current devs focus ).
For me, looking at this 7 years, it is an apprehension of "yes tomorrow, because today i add contents and beautifull things and have to resolve bugs who engender".
But i keep hope that is just a delay.

Reorder planned features on steam page could be fair !

Quote
  • Planned Features:

  • More items, crafting recipes, weapons and gameplay systems. 
  • Constant expansion of the countryside and cities around Muldraugh and West Point
  • Full wilderness survival systems, animals and hunting for food. 
  • The return of our PZ Stories mode that also serves as first ever tutorial actively trying to kill you at every turn. Kate and Baldspot return!
  • In-depth and varied NPC encounters driven in a persistent world, powered by a metagame system that turns each play-through into your very own zombie survival movie with emergent narrative gameplay.
  • Steam Workshop and Achievements support

 

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I admit too there are just some "immersive" additions to the game that have made it less fun to play.

 

I hate the multistage building system. I now have to spend double time of my life to build a safe house.

To me that addition to the game was a clear waste of time and total feature creep.

 

I dont build safehouses in zomboid anymore because of it :/

 

 

 

Also the TV and Radios sounded cool on paper but the execution of it sucked and its usually just ignored by most players.

 

 

I do admit the Vehicles is an amazing much needed addition and thats one of the few praises I have of their new work. Vehicles was something i thought would never be implemented.

 

 

I dread the devs updates sometimes. They want to make weapons weaker and all these little useless balance changes with only the multiplayer experience in mind, this is a game, it shouldn't be a chore to have fun in a game.

Edited by IndigoRebel
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On 1/21/2018 at 2:50 PM, DicheBach said:

I am tempted to post a "Do Not Recommend" review on Steam.

 

You made some good points in your post. They were said pretty arrogantly but good points nonetheless. However, as soon as you write a sentence like this, you lose all respect immediately.

 

As if writing this sentence will suddenly made the developers stop what they're doing, start grovelling and begin implementing the features you specifically want, in some desperate attempt to prevent a negative Steam review. To me, all that sentence says is that you're petulant and you (and others like you) shouldn't buy early access games.  You should stick to buying finished products.

 

Personally, I've really enjoyed watching PZ grow since purchasing in 2013 and count myself lucky to be semi-included in the development process. Sure, certain features I'm looking forward to have taken longer than I anticipated but so what? It's a video game. When I started gaming, public betas and demos were barely a thing. You'd read 2 paragraphs about an upcoming game in a magazine and maybe if you're lucky, you'd get a free demo disc or something closer to release date.

 

Once PZ is finished, that's it. It'll either be a great game or it won't, regardless of the time taken to make it.

 

After reading a great book, does the amount of time it took the author to write it affect your overall review of the book?

After eating a sandwich, does the amount of time it took you to make it affect your opinion of it?

 

Why should video games be any different?

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Right. Better to sugar coat it for the developers. Wouldn't want to hurt their feelings by letting them know that "I am [was] tempted to post a 'Do Not Recommend' review on Steam."

 

It couldn't possibly help them (the developers) to know how one individual (me) responded when the individual (me) realized the game lacks this functionality (NPCs), and since my communication might be possibly confused by them (or others, such as yourself) as being "petulant," I should not have been so honest . . . :-D

 

It is a great game. I'm tempted (at this point) to write a "Recommend" review on Steam. The Devs themselves seem very cool; I can empathize with being a slack ass, gifted at "strategic procrastination" with great skills, excellent vision, but minimal discipline (assuming that MIGHT be part of the problem, which I'm sure it couldn't possibly be!).

 

Sadly, That "Mostly Positive/Mixed/ . . ." bit on Steam's sales page is probably the single most unfair mechanism in the consumers tool bag. Unfair because, small revolutionary movements occur from time to time where sanctimonious users "band together" to "raid" a games reviews pages and drive its status down (at least temporarily). Some of the reasons this happens are not properly linked to the actual merits of the product and sometimes there is little that the game's developer or publisher could do about it.

 

But not always; there are a lot of stinkers on Steam and that aggregate rating mechanism also insures that stinkers don't manage to fleece too many unwitting consumers.

 

You'll notice, I haven't written any review for Project Zomboid yet, and I made a point of alerting the games forums (and whomever might read those forums) that at one point my reaction to the lack of ONE feature made me consider writing a bad review. If you cannot see how generous and helpful that was for me to do that I don't know what else to tell you.

Edited by DicheBach
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Indeed...there's nothing wrong with honest feedback, especially if its delivered in a non-offensive manner. I may not agree with all the points raised in the initial post, but its FAR better then the usual troll tripe I see when I look at the negative posts in the steam discussions. Alot of people don't seem to realize the reality of software:  It changes over time. Features are added and removed until it is abandoned and no longer in development.  If a 'must have' feature is getting removed in a update, you freeze your version and refuse to update (not sure if steam lets you do this though since I don't actively use it).

Sadly I feel sorry for the TIS team, they take a insane amount of crap on steam (especially Enigma it seems).  I may not agree with all their choices either, but its their game, not mine. No one spends this long on a piece of code unless they actively love working on it (or some boss is slaving them to do it, which is not the case here).

I know I got this game for what it is, not what it will/might be in the future. A decision I don't regret. If development ever starts to go in direction I don't like, I will keep playing the previous versions and still be content with this game and what the team has done with it.

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5 hours ago, DicheBach said:

You'll notice, I haven't written any review for Project Zomboid yet,

 

And the world holds its breath.

 

If you want to write a review then just write a review man. You don't need to announce it everyone, one way or the other.

 

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The game is fully worth every penny all of us paid for it, and it is a good game already, despite still being in early access. Once I had played it past the point where I started this thread, that became clear to me. But I started this thread because I played it for a while, expected I might encounter some other survivors but didn't  (shocking I know, but I don't often read ALL the fine print documentation and the full Internet post history for every title I buy . . .), played it a while longer and still didn't . . . did some searching and pretty soon realized there are no NPC survivors in the game, and it was at that point that I had a reaction: "You gotta be kidding me!?" (grinning [not grimacing] mouth agape in surprise). So I posted, strictly in the interest of providing feedback. I had (and have) no intent of causing anyone any grief, nor engaging in hysterics, merely to convey the reaction of one user upon realizing there were no NPCs. Given I'm an older, fairly low-expectations user with some insights into software development that might be indicative of how a broad range of younger and/or higher-expectations users without much insight into software development might react. In sum, it is a very big "gap" in the game. Game is still worth buying and fun and not in anyway "not worth the sales price."

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I really don't know why you keep insisting it's "fine print." It's print that's the same size as the rest of the text on the Steam store, directly under the Planned Features heading, a third of the way down. What's wrong with just saying 'I didn't bother reading the whole store page" or "I just assumed it'd have them. Fuck!" 

 

And yes, considering how often I get attacked for inaccuracies in communication on the Internet, the phrasing really does bother me: your comments tend to lean more towards the idea that we purposefully tried to mislead you, rather than you simply made a mistake and acted on an assumption. 

 

That may be why this thread got a different response than you expected.

 

(Edited to be a bit more clear.)

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I navigated to this page and didn't log in to my Steam account, so it shows up as if I do not own the game:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/108600/Project_Zomboid/

 

I did a search on "planned" got three hits, all of which were inside of the minimized "Early Access Game" text box. In order to see the actual spots where "planned" occurred I had to expand that text box, as shown here:

 

sz5PV.jpg

 

In the interest of self-vindication, that is all I need to point out. Any mentioning of the presence or absence of survivor NPCs is, apparently, at best contained within a minimized text box.

 

Like I said, as shocking as it might seem, I don't make a habit of reading all the "fine print" (a figure of speech) documentation. I would be willing to bet that 95% of consumers do not, which makes me taking my time and energy to provide feedback to you about this matter an act of generosity to give you some opportunity to consider how a typical consumer might react.

 

I'm not seeing any clear and concise message in expanded "Early Access Game" text box that would run approximately equivalent in message to:

HLtVj.jpg

 

ADDIT: in any event, it is a good game, I respect the vision and creativity of the developers and I'm pleased to give it a positive Recommendation.

 

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198071309618/recommended/108600

 

Godspeed Indie Stone!

Edited by DicheBach
aha! image embeds
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This is me making a comment because I had to back-read this whole thing. Now NPCs would be great in the game, and they could possibly do it now sure, it's possible. However, this feature is minuscule in comparison to a much more desired and important part of the game, that I would argue ties into the core of survival and what this game is all about. This feature I speak of is obviously, the ability to place pots outside, and when it rains have them fill up with water. Truly a daunting game mechanic to implement and completely necessary for me to enjoy the game again. When I saw mention of this feature as an idea, years ago, I became super hyped. I consequently became super sad after realizing that, it wasn't coming anytime soon. Made me real sad I tell ya, so I sympathize with you.

 

I'd also like to ask what kind of people you play multiplayer with that are burdens/drags or you form fragile troubled relationships. Are they like, stealing your kitchen supplies and all of your Cola's? Because you know at that point the correct course of action is to just shoot them and never let them back into your sky base. I'd be damn mad if some thief tried to take my collection of forks.

Edited by Queen Glory
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11 minutes ago, Queen Glory said:

This is me making a comment because I had to back-read this whole thing. Now NPCs would be great in the game, and they could possibly do it now sure, it's possible. However, this feature is minuscule in comparison to a much more desired and important part of the game, that I would argue ties into the core of survival and what this game is all about. This feature I speak of is obviously, the ability to place pots outside, and when it rains have them fill up with water. 

Wait that hasnt been implemented yet?

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Ah okay got scared for a sec :D

 

 

 

This thread indeed got too petulant.

All I ask is make old style building toggleable in Sandbox because I haaaaate having to cut down more trees to build a base... just sooooo time consuming.

 

Anyways if you take off the rosetinted zomboid shades you see that your complaining about NPCs in a game that has not had a crowbar model for years.

Yea.......

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