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Self-sustainability and the culprit


Dr_Cox1911

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So after every update my group is playing like this:

  • I boot up the server with pretty much the Survival difficulty (sometimes even up it a bit)
  • Each one (we are 4 players) chooses their class, so that everything is covered
  • We try to find each other as quickly as possible
  • Looking for a safehouse (if we haven't done this already beforehand)
  • Loot everything important
  • Play for aprox. 1-2 ingame months (until we reach the self-sustainability point)
  • stop playing

 

I like PZ, I really do, but after these short playsessions we (my group and me) run out of real goals that we want to achieve.

I thought about different playstiles already, but all of them are somewhat featurelimiting instead of boosting them. Like playing the nomad-style with a bunch of cars constantly on the move, but you pretty much annihilate carpentry, farming completely.

 

So, how do you guys cope with this? Or are we the only ones affected?

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I had that issue when I played in survival, and I reached the conclusion that it just got too easy for me, so I started making things increasingly difficult via sandbox in sp and making variables much harsher in my server. What you consider more or less difficult may vary, but other than that there isn't a lot you can currently do.  Eventually you'll get used to things being harder and you'll reach this point again, I think It's inevitable unless you play against other people or npcs, that makes things way more hectic and unpredictable.

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I think a lot of player probably go through the same. 'Feature-limiting' yourself is not always a bad thing, especially if it increases playability. As I said in the other thread, I don't farm, or forage, or actually engage in many of the games features.

I never really reach that point of actual self-sustainability, mostly I wander around the map looting ammo (ignoring almost everything else except some food items), killing as many Z's as i can and living on the edge. Just surviving is not the same as living!

 

If you've found your running out of 'real' goals, time to invent some new ones. Since your playing in MP with friends you've got more options then someone playing in SP. Try going competitive with your friends (not meaning aggressive pvp):

Find the best cars you can, tune them up...then race around the map for pink slips!

or hold collection competitions. see you can get the most of a specific random item. looser has to get drunk, go into the mall with nothing but a pile of butter knives and fetch a specific item from one of the shops.

 

Just need get creative, live a little and not just try to survive.

 

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It's like that with any game I've played.  From Rimworld to Kerbal: once you "beat the game" (usually 40 or so hours played), there's not much left. The scamble at the beginning is always the best part of the game. Then it becomes self-motivating: "I want to build a plane so large it resembles a train!" or "I've got to see the last cinematic cutscene!"

 

I'm tempted to pick the game apart for it, but it really comes down to a lack of new things to discover . . . Yet even rng games get stale fairly quickly, as it's all algorithmic in the end. And if it has fixed quests? Most games pad it by travel or fetch quests, which PZ doesn't have. Then it's just the slog to finish the final third of the game - you're already a pro, be it KotOR, Diablo, or even RTSs like C&C.

 

There's lots of ways to do that in PZ, too,.

You can see some attempts with radios, stash maps, special locations for loot, and enforcing replayability through professions (which largely doesn't work). It just doesn't take it far enough, being passive content, or is not fully implemented. There lacks a whole to build on while the major features wait in the wings. It's always waiting for something more.

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11 hours ago, Fenris_Wolf said:

I think a lot of player probably go through the same. 'Feature-limiting' yourself is not always a bad thing, especially if it increases playability. As I said in the other thread, I don't farm, or forage, or actually engage in many of the games features.

The problem with this: we are four players, so each of us is already limited to certain features of the game, e.g. we have one builder, one cook, ...

We don't really know how else we should limit this, we even did different aspects of these roles, like focus on metalworking and don't use wood, don't use fishing only farming.

 

And yep, pretty much every game has this, but I would really like a longer PZ session then we currently have.

For instance I would like to play on bigger servers with some PvP action but none really suit our playstyle. 

11 hours ago, TheLeonBM said:

I had that issue when I played in survival, and I reached the conclusion that it just got too easy for me, so I started making things increasingly difficult via sandbox in sp and making variables much harsher in my server. What you consider more or less difficult may vary, but other than that there isn't a lot you can currently do. 

I've already done this. For loot we use my mod  to tweak the spawnrates to a minimum and with Zeds it's only a difficulty spike until we meet up. After we've met one player usually kites (by foot or with a car) and the others go looting. Adding more zombies then we usually have makes this more timeconsuming but not really harder (and it tanks the fps).

 

Oh, and I'm not saying that this is a fault of PZ, I think it's mainly due to our playstyle that we experience this.

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5 hours ago, Dr_Cox1911 said:

The problem with this: we are four players, so each of us is already limited to certain features of the game, e.g. we have one builder, one cook, ..

Another idea which I've tried with my group is to model yourself in your character as best you can. Give it your weight, your skills, even your dietary restrictions (I played the game gluten/dairy free!). This made for at least one more interesting playthrough with a much less synergistic (and initially quite useless) squad.

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Just increase the zombies multiplier. Remember your in a server with four players not on single player so the difficulty should be appropriate to the number of players on your server. Set the zombie multiplier to 4.0 its double the amount of zombies in survival settings. Set the peak multiplier to 3. Increase the distance between the zombies on a group. Set it to 7,8 or 9 so they look more spread and its harder for your guys to run or sneak. Pitch black nights, increase meta events, increase the number of zombies in a group by 200 or more, instant shut off water and electricity, all loots are rare, imcrease zombie respawn at least 1/2 or double

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