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I'm not really a fan of the Apocalypse/Survivor split


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So we have 2 differnt game modes now:

 

In Apocalypse, ALL character builds have to deal with these annoying instant death mechanics. Not even a trained martial artist can properly fight zombies.

 

In Survivor/Fighter/Brawler, ALL character builds are just fine. Even a feeble nerd can push back 3 zombies at the same time & dual-hit them. While zombies will still scratch like Freddy Krueger & bite like Lord Dracula.

 

Instead of enforcing different rule sets that will be difficult to balance, shouldn't the focus be on making sure that every character build is good at what it's actually supposed to be good at? Fighters fight, Builders build, Survivors survive. It kinda fells like Zomboid is duplicating it's own game mechanics here and starting to chase its own tail, if you know what i mean?

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15 minutes ago, ZombiesLoveBrainiacs said:

So we have 2 differnt game modes now:

 

In Apocalypse, ALL character builds have to deal with these annoying instant death mechanics. Not even a trained martial artist can properly fight zombies.

 

In Survivor/Fighter/Brawler, ALL character builds are just fine. Even a feeble nerd can push back 3 zombies at the same time & dual-hit them. While zombies will still scratch like Freddy Krueger & bite like Lord Dracula.

 

Instead of enforcing different rule sets that will be difficult to balance, shouldn't the focus be on making sure that every character build is good at what it's actually supposed to be good at? Fighters fight, Builders build, Survivors survive. It kinda fells like Zomboid is duplicating it's own game mechanics here and starting to chase its own tail, if you know what i mean?

I think that the idea is to make more like a "default" (Not the correct word I think) mode in general, not just focused on the character builds. If you want to make the game more suited for your gameplay style, you can made your own with the sandbox mode, so I think that the new modes are just something "generic" or even "canon" modes.

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I'm confused why people keep talking about instant death mechanics in Apocalypse. 

I'm also confused in what you're trying to describe or criticize regarding the two modes. 

There is a pretty clear difference when your character in Apocalypse has fighting skills and/or sneaking skills vs those who do not. Is the game harder for people with specific traits that aid in things like stealth and combat? Well, yea but that's part of how the character creation works and those are options the player can choose to modify their own experience. 

It's very clear that there are a group of Zomboid players the devs do not want to leave behind in the dust with the new animation update. Zomboid has been too easy for years, people have grown complacent where combat became completely trivial and day to day survival, moment to moment combat had zero risk. 

 

To that end, with what the devs have envisioned for years in terms of what Zomboid should represent and play as starting to finally come to fruition in B41, people have been playing Zomboid for years with the game playing a specific way, which while not really what the devs had in mind for the final product, is what some players are comfortable and enjoy. 

 

Which is why the need for two distinct modes came to be, at least from my view. It's obvious they don't want Survivor to be seen as some "easy" mode when compared to Apocalypse, but it's more of what players were accustomed to before the animation overhaul. B41 is pretty much a whole new game, to some it's not fun because of just how brutal and realistic the combat mechanics are, and instead of telling them to pound sand the devs have decides to attempt to accommodate them.

 

And from comments and overall discussions, Survivor will receive a constant flow of balance changes because Apocalypse as it stands is pretty close to what they wanted out of it. Apocalypse is the baseline, so to speak, Survivor is how to tweak the game with the new overhaul to retain the "feel" of pre B41.

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8 hours ago, ZombiesLoveBrainiacs said:

So we have 2 differnt game modes now:

 

In Apocalypse, ALL character builds have to deal with these annoying instant death mechanics. Not even a trained martial artist can properly fight zombies.

 

In Survivor/Fighter/Brawler, ALL character builds are just fine. Even a feeble nerd can push back 3 zombies at the same time & dual-hit them. While zombies will still scratch like Freddy Krueger & bite like Lord Dracula.

 

Instead of enforcing different rule sets that will be difficult to balance, shouldn't the focus be on making sure that every character build is good at what it's actually supposed to be good at? Fighters fight, Builders build, Survivors survive. It kinda fells like Zomboid is duplicating it's own game mechanics here and starting to chase its own tail, if you know what i mean?

I agree, I dont like the Apocalypse/Survivor split either, they are making things harder for themselves and splitting the player base.

 

They should remove Survival and Builder, then just enable multihit for a few weapons like axe, pickaxe, baseball bat, katana and make it so you can shove 2 zombies.

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+1

I also prefer 1 mode and than focus more on traits and skills.

 

You want multihit - get your combat to lvl 4 or 5 and use 2h weapons

You want to shove 2-3 zombies at once ? Pick strenght trait.

You want to build more ? Pick carpenter etc that can salvage more materials when dismantling things.

 

I feel that the whole RPG aspect in PZ is so underused.

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21 minutes ago, Zorak said:

+1

I also prefer 1 mode and than focus more on traits and skills.

 

You want multihit - get your combat to lvl 4 or 5 and use 2h weapons

You want to shove 2-3 zombies at once ? Pick strenght trait.

You want to build more ? Pick carpenter etc that can salvage more materials when dismantling things.

 

I feel that the whole RPG aspect in PZ is so underused.

Exactly, 10 strenght should totally enable multihit for all 2handed weapons!

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1 hour ago, Josko said:

Exactly, 10 strenght should totally enable multihit for all 2handed weapons!

How are you going to hit a few enemies with one swing IRL. After hitting the first person, the best thing you can do to the other one is gently slap him with your weapon.

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2 hours ago, Burger_Time said:

How are you going to hit a few enemies with one swing IRL. After hitting the first person, the best thing you can do to the other one is gently slap him with your weapon.

 

Yeah, I think dual-hit is only reasonably realistic for weapons like the sledgehammer & katana. How many zombies can be pushed should definitly be based on the character build, tho. Same with neck-bites and the number of zombies it takes to get dragged to the ground and eaten.

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Multi-hit is a bit of a band-aid solution because we don't have an abstraction of heavy weapons knocking zombies into each other or anything like that, there's no conservation of momentum. You clatter one zombie with a sledge or axe and it drops, your swing is over. When in real life that one zombie noggin will not slow down such a weighty weapon very much and the chance of carrying on the swing to hit the zombie standing right next to it is pretty high (either with the sledge directly or with the zombie body you just imparted all that force into, and should now be getting thrown into its mates). Or at least it should be high for people who have the strength to impart all that force into the sledge/axe to begin with. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm in favour of multi-hit being a skill-based mechanic (one which is not 100% reliable either, to account for imperfect hit conditions) rather than a toggle switch, and whatever other mechanics could be better translated as skills or traits over blanket sandbox settings for every player. Like zombie drag-down and rear vulnerability. These should be things that highly skilled players in Apocalypse mode should have a better chance of avoiding, through physical conditioning and combat experience.

Though this does nothing really to affect the inverted difficulty curve the game has, where a new character with no skills is the greatest challenge offered to the player, while the threat to a maxed character is minimal and survival becomes mundane. The zombie numbers gradually increasing over time mitigates this somewhat, but if you survive past Peak Day that's basically the game won, might as well start over. Flipped difficulty curve is nothing unique to PZ though, in fact it seems to afflict most games that are built upon realistic simulation. Kerbal Space Program's career mode has the same problem, and no one seems to have an adequate solution for the start of the game being ball-bustingly difficult and the endgame trivial to the point of boredom.

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The point is more-so to avoid non-ending conversations on difficulty in Survival (now Apocalypse) and to prevent others guilt trip people for playing a specific mode, without the hangups of the prior names and descriptions for the preset play-styles. They could potentially have their own variation of the Sadistic AI director, later on to provide each with more unique gameplay, but that's about it in terms of special treatment considered. 

 

Thus, you've read too much into it. The point isn't to have character traits or abilities match those modes. The game isn't chasing its tail.

 

These conversations or negative comments and reviews on difficulty waste too much time.

Ergo: we're not putting multi-hit into Apocolypse. Play the brawler playstyle if you want a more build 40 feel to your combat, or alter it in sandbox.

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I understand drawing a line and not re-litigating every single case ad nauseum for every mechanic that's been settled, but the primary game mode that all players are introduced through is one that should be debated in great detail for the entire IWBUMS period, it's too important not to. The other playstyles are superfluous so long as sandbox exists and the challenge maps exclusively go by Apocalypse rules. For those reasons Apocalypse should get top billing as far as in-depth discussion and debate goes.

 

These extra playstyles were, according to you guys, only added out of fear/anticipation of backlash from the breadth of changes in the combat system. Something which turned out to be wholly unwarranted as the build has been received very positively from what I can tell. You don't need to go around with your guard still up, the danger has passed. Would it not be easier to focus all the balancing discussion around a single "default" or "dev's choice" playstyle meant to introduce new players, with sandbox available for those who find it lacking for their particular tastes? A variety of tastes you will never be able to encapsulate into one or two alternate game modes. The sandbox nature of the game is probably PZ's greatest strength, and these oddly categorised playstyles detract from that strength imo. If I play Apocalypse it's because I want to play the game "as the devs intended" and I play sandbox for when I want to try something a bit different. Why would I ever play brawler or builder? In fact all of my sandbox games so far have borrowed elements from each game mode, since each of them alone comes with settings I'm not a fan of. The assumption for why people would play these modes seems to be "because Apocalypse is too unforigiving or light on combat". How has this assumption played out in practice? Have people actually complained about the philosophy guiding the playstyle, or rather the specifics of its implementation? Given how much trouble you guys had just finding relevant names for them, how appropriate really are these modes to the core vision of the game, particularly when bumping sandbox (which is already the perfect solution for anyone unhappy with Apocalypse) further down the list for them?

 

On a more casual note, why are you constantly so defensive or curt whenever anyone questions the wisdom of "playstyles" that few if any will ever play? Don't take criticism personally, wounded pride is bad for business, as well as impatience over repetition. While I understand the frustration the responses are not appropriate. You may have seen these arguments and decided your stance on them long ago, but not everyone else has, or feels they've been adequately settled for the health of the game. How exactly one can "waste time" in this context is something you'll have to explain. Just don't respond if you don't want to "waste time" in a forum discussion.

Calm down, like, things are going well. You either want feedback on balancing or you don't, so pick which one it is, snippy dismissive or strawmanning responses when you get it achieve nothing. Nobody wants build 40 back, stop pretending we do for the sake of ignoring valid critiques of 41.

 

I can't speak for every player but I want the game to be more fun, more challenging, more realistic, with more incentive for replayability. I'm sure you do too, so why act as if players taking time to share their thoughts are your adversaries rather than your natural allies? You wouldn't get very far conducting yourself like that with customers in person.

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1 hour ago, Loskene said:

I understand drawing a line and not re-litigating every single case ad nauseum for every mechanic that's been settled, but the primary game mode that all players are introduced through is one that should be debated in great detail for ... 

 

Let me just stop you there: No.

 

There are 3 primary playstles. Pick between them.  Play one or the other. There is no special favorite anymore; there is no "recommended" experience. They're all just Zomboid.


I don't care for your argument that it has 'top-billing" and therefore giving into your whims, or those that agree with you, is our only correct course of action. It has to go somewhere on the list - and we're certainly not putting builder up top. We're not putting Survivor up there as it represents a more build 40-esque and the baggage the "survival" name carries. As is, the tutorial is what gets the top spot.

 

So stop reading all this nonsense into it and let go.

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