Jump to content

Feedback on Apocalypse (and a few other things) (big post)


Ziggylata

Recommended Posts

Ive been playing a lot of Apocalypse and a lot of derivatives of Apocalypse on Sandbox and after giving it the most playtime out of all the modes, I would like to voice my opinion on some of the aspects that get on my nerves and the things I prefer about it over the other gamemodes. Ill be going through the aspects from top to bottom via the sandbox options and then talk about some specific stuff that really doesnt work I feel.

 

Please keep in mind, these are my thoughts and are open to debate but I generally am looking to improve the experience overall.

 

 

  • Zombie Count: High

While I feel this is okay, it really has to do with the next bullet point that makes this an unweildy thing to have.

  • Zombie Distribution: Urban Focused 

This doesnt seem to be working right in some areas, the first area being Muldraugh being one of the most swamped areas to start in ever. Theyre spread out so evenly that stealth to anywhere you might want to go is next to impossible as an average character and even then its quite crazy. You also cant really fight because of the loot (which ill get down to there) not allowing you to really fight any groups larger than 2 or 3 if youre being generous.

 

  • Water/Electricity Shutoff: 0-30 days 
  • *DEV* Water/ElecShutModifier: 14

This is something I feel shouldnt be here like this, for anyone who doesnt know, there is a secret modifier for Apocalypse that makes water and electricity on apocalypse go off on day 14 nearly 100% of the time if not 100% of the time. This takes off some of the randomness the game is supposed to have and id like to see it back to the way it used to be where its actually 0-30 days. 

 

  • Darkness During Night: Normal

I feel that the night levels are way way too bright, its not dark at all outside and whenever I play sandbox I almost always turn this down to Dark or Pitch Black. Night-time without cat-eyes is bright and flashlights have nearly no place. Not only that, but I feel the zombies can see you just as easy at night as they can in the daytime and this is another thing id like to see modified, a risk/reward ratio for going out at night where you cant see but neither can they. 

 

  • Farming Speed: Normal

In my opinion, this should be slowed down. Cabbage and other fast-growing crops give so much food so fast that my Apocalypse character has absolutely no need to go out and loot, as it stands ive got 3 or 4 freezers full of farming food and im only 3 months in. 

 

  • Sadistic AI Director
    • Helicopter: Once
    • Meta Event: Sometimes

This needs some work. Helicopter is one of the most anxiety events you can have happen near your home and it only happens once. As I put in my point above, I spend a lot of time not going out on Apocalypse once im set up, the Meta Events do not contribute or affect my home-life in any way and im not too far away from an urban area. Helicopter would be a great problem to throw at me but it only happens one time. I feel there are not enough late-game meta events to challenge my comfortable home life, theres not enough to happen to anyone when youre getting towards the late game. The only thing I can think of would be Winter, provided you dont have the food you need (which I do and you could supplement with foraging, fishing or trapping). Its one of my biggest game-fatigue gripes I have with this game and theres a few more ill be talking about.

 

  • Decaying Corpse Health Impact: Normal

You can expand this a lot. Currently, this doesnt really do anything or impact the game at all unless theyre literally in your house. I feel even walking through corpse-dense areas could and should give you diseases and illnesses, this would make "prone to illness" less of a free point trait and resilient might be taken more than not at all. Currently, the only corpse management I ever do is outside my immediate living area. 

 

  • Loot Rarity
    • Food: Rare
    • Weapon: Rare
    • Other: Rare

Oh boy, where do I even begin here. Im going to be blunt here, there is no reason my starting house should have 1 battery and some makeup in it. Thats not a joke. There is a lot that needs to be done with the loot as I often find it frustrating to not find a single article of clothing in multiple houses, to not find any kitchen knives or can openers in any houses at all. To go through a warehouse and find that 50% or more of the boxes inside do not have a single item inside. Theres a lot of work here, im not griping too much at the food or weapons (although its a bit silly) but theres a lot of work I feel needs to be done with the commodity items, like, by a lot. The early-game is a lot of going from house to house, hoping you dont get spotted by a group and hoping you find even just one single good item so I can defend myself without spamming shove. Its not unfair, its not cheap, its just extremely tedious and RNG reliant. 

 

  • Clothing Degradation: Normal

I think this needs to be slowed down but not as much as the "slow" option does. On normal, only about 6 hours will propel my clothes into the dirtiest and bloodiest they can be. On Slow, I can go nearly a week before I hit the same point.

 

  • Weapon Multihit (off)

This is complicated, I like this being off. However, id like to see some experimentation. What ive found is when youre playing and get swarmed by 2 or 3 at the same pace (which is doable to fight off), the best way to deal with it is to spam shove until one or two of them fall over so you can actually attack one of them. If you want to run away, you need to spam shove until you get a window of opportunity most of the time. I dont want to hit multiple zombies at the same time, but maybe shoving two at the same time would make it a lot less reliant on spamming shove until something just works out. This is something that would desperately need to be tested as I feel it might not work out or might make the game too easy, but the situation I have described is a common one.

 

  • Cars in general

I dont know much about cars but for me, I think the spawn rate is a bit too low, theres not a lot of vehicles that just, exist, at all. Id be fine if there were a lot of broken ones but there just arent that many in the world at all, I like cars in the urban settings just for the atmosphere they give, making the world feel more tangible to me.

 

  • Car Alarm Frequency: Extremely Rare

Ive never even seen this happen by default.

 

  • Zombie Lore
    • Zombie House Alarm Triggering (off)

I just dont get this one, any reason for this? This is something I turn on when im playing sandbox. I just like it when zombies can shamble out of a house and I walk in and the alarm goes off. Theyre still people, theyre just dead... People...

 

THE BIG ONE

  • Respawn Hours: 72
  • Respawn Unseen Hours: 16

This is too much, this is way way way too much. I can best describe this with an example. My apocalypse character lives on the edge of town, so town is on cells im not on most of the time. There is no incentive to kill or clear out the town ever because the hordes and hordes I might wipe with my shotgun will just respawn in a few days at most. Theres no reason to do it. By extension, theres no reason to ever go in town because of this. My apocalypse character looted every building in Rosewood and now theres no reason to ever walk over there. Lately, when I make a sandbox preset, I generally turn this up to 1 month or more. Its just too much and its my biggest fatigue problem in PZ right now.

 

 

Now that ive gone over the apocalypse options, id like to address a few things that bug me a bit here and there.

 

One thing ive noticed with the new anims are the limited walking animations and lunging animations and standing animations. I know theyre hard to do, but having a lot more variety in these improves the immersion, standing anims are the worst in this regard. All zombies have the same standing idle animation and it really stands out. Sprinters should also not sprint when theyre unalerted by something (I made another thread on this but its easy to just throw in here).

 

Combat, ive talked about the combat briefly when talking about "weapon multihit" but something new has risen from the current new combat and anim systems. Animation-Canceling. Anim-Canceling is something that was posted on a Wood Axe thread asking to reduce the endurance usage and improve the weapon overall. Someone posted a video of anim-canceling and its use in combat and anim-canceling makes it go from one of the worst weapons into one of the best weapons nearly instantly. Ive tested this myself and it works with all weapons and but best used with the sledgehammer and wood axe because of their slower swings. Generally it works like this. Holding CTRL enters the combat stance. If your weapon is in the swing state and not recovery and you let go of CTRL and move your character away (easiest to do in the opposite direction), your character will interrupt the swing animation allowing you to attack faster and negate the full 1 second recovery time after a swing. It also allows you to move away and recover to a safe distance for group fighting. This can be done with all weapons, like ive said, but its generally unreliable with faster-swinging weapons as you can only interrupt the weapon mid-swing and not in recovery. 

Ill be honest here, I like this but its not intended and it probably doesnt fit the PZ vision. I like it because it adds a tech-skill but it also makes combat super reliable and super strong. It also lets you use two more weapons that function different than every other weapon in the game, at the cost of a ton of endurance use (seriously, even with level 9 fitness, sledgehammer can only swing about 5 or 10 times before you start to be exerted.) Id like to see this explored rather than outright removed. 

 

 

 

Thank you for reading. I know this is a big post. I ask if you respond to something, please quote the portion of text youre replying to so its easier to discuss and explore what works and what doesnt, whats "just my opinion" and whats viewed as an actual problem.

I care a lot about this game and I remember when I got it on Desura, development of this game may be slow but it holds a special place in my heart. I want to see it be the best it can and improving the default gamemode would be a great start for building a lot of replay ability.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a veteran player (over 1.2k hours) I mostly agree with your opinions, however there are a few things I disagree with.

 

I wouldn't like multi-shove to come back. Combat now is as easy as ever after getting used to animations, besides maybe being attacked from behind. If you're constantly attacked by multiple zombies, the problem then is in your playstyle.

 

Imo loot rarity is fine. Even on very rare you'll be swimming in stuff after some time.

 

Car spawns imo are fine. I even enjoyed 6 months later scenario more where there are less cars afaik and you also need to find a working battery. I'd like to see some cars spawn with missing parts, i.e no wheel, no  battery, no door, missing a seat or two, etc. Now on Apocalypse you only need to find a car with a key and usually find petrol and off you go.

 

Zombie distribution I'd like to see by default go slowly from urban focused to uniform, i.e. within a year. That would make late game harder imo, nowhere would be safe.

 

Zombie respawn, redistribution, grouping, etc. imo must be random within some minimum and maximum values. You'd never know how much zombies had respawned, when, or when they're going to come from other cells.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Geras said:

I wouldn't like multi-shove to come back. Combat now is as easy as ever after getting used to animations, besides maybe being attacked from behind. If you're constantly attacked by multiple zombies, the problem then is in your playstyle.

I like to approach things head-on, so yes.

 

2 hours ago, Geras said:

Imo loot rarity is fine. Even on very rare you'll be swimming in stuff after some time.

I really think its too little. Like I said in my post, I found 1 makeup kit and 1 battery in my starting house, nothing else. Multilple houses never have pieces of clothing in them, kitchens can often not have anything as simple as a knife or can opener or even a fork or spoon. Im not asking for a fireaxe being in every box, im just saying there should maybe be items that are a lot more common? 

 

2 hours ago, Geras said:

Zombie distribution I'd like to see by default go slowly from urban focused to uniform, i.e. within a year. That would make late game harder imo, nowhere would be safe.

This doesnt really address the issue I mentioned, no offense, but I get what you mean. I find plenty out in the woods or rural areas as is. 

 

2 hours ago, Geras said:

Zombie respawn, redistribution, grouping, etc. imo must be random within some minimum and maximum values. You'd never know how much zombies had respawned, when, or when they're going to come from other cells.

I wouldnt mind that either, but even so id want the minimum to be turned up so im not dealing with hundreds of respawns in a week in one part of town, cause ive had this happen 3 or 4 times on apocalypse and its just like "why even bother?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

liking to approach things head on is the wrong mindset, you'd be very useful for helping the devs finding a good difficulty balance on survivor instead. 

 

 

loot distribution this scarce is a gameplay necessity, in the axe post you said you can already survive months with no effort, having a realistic amount of loot would make it too easy and shorten the time required before you're self sufficient by too much. 

 

 

 

zombie distribution is a bit wonky right now, but in the intended version geras' suggestion is basicly perfect, like what happens in every zombie story. i would just add wandering hordes to the mix. 

 

 

 

random respawn would be very very nice, this way you'd never be sure if you're safe. neither being sure it's empty nor being sure everything respawned, perfect 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Livio Persemprio said:

liking to approach things head on is the wrong mindset, you'd be very useful for helping the devs finding a good difficulty balance on survivor instead. 

Survivor is too easy and I dont like it. I want to play apocalypse. Even with what apocalypse is, its still too much. Stealth focused but theres too many to stealth unless you play on Riverside or the really quiet areas of Rosewood.

 

9 minutes ago, Livio Persemprio said:

loot distribution this scarce is a gameplay necessity, in the axe post you said you can already survive months with no effort, having a realistic amount of loot would make it too easy and shorten the time required before you're self sufficient by too much. 

I refer to commodities. Jackets, clothing, bowls, all these things are surprisingly rare for no real reason. Like I give an example plenty of times, I spawned in a house with a battery and some makeup. The entire house only had 1 single battery and some makeup in it. Thats not really right and that kind of thing always makes me say "apocalypse loot sure is great". Its not that I want guns in every single cabinet, I dont want knives and baseball bats all over, I just want commodities that would even be left behind to be left behind. Despite the buff to soap spawnrates, its still very easy to not find a single bar of soap in 10 houses in a row. 

 

11 minutes ago, Livio Persemprio said:

random respawn would be very very nice, this way you'd never be sure if you're safe. neither being sure it's empty nor being sure everything respawned, perfect 

"nor being sure everything respawned" isnt my idea of perfect. Why would I bother to smash down an entire towns population of zombies and risk death only so they can maybe all respawn again. Theres too much of that garbage. I know youre going to go "survivor is for you" but it really isnt. Builder and Survivor should not be gamemode selections to begin with, its splitting up the focus. Apocalypse is the hard one and thats the one im going to play, it keeps the gameplay pure and the tension high. The only thing wrong with it are a few annoyances that ive experienced and heard others complain about or joke about as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

survivor is too easy, that's why it could use your help in balancing in a challenging way that revolves around combat. i don't inderstand. 

 

 

 

 

commodities and tools are the reason you have to leave base and scavenge even months in after the apocalypse, that's why they are so rare. it's unrealistic nut provides gameplay balance. 

 

 

 

here we go again. you're not supposed tl be able to clear a full area alone, and the game will be further balanced in that direction, so, again, help balance the fighting focused mode if you like to solve problems by fighting. 

it is perfectly doable to sneak around even with a high population, and once you killed them all you are just free to loot, breaking the balance of the game. 

pit together some ideas, make survivor more balanced and enjoy that, there is no shame in playing as you like, but they will never make apocalypse more fight centered. if anything, apocalypse will become even less fighting centered so help where you'd be very very helpful, survivor needs the help of people like you. let apocalypse be the mode where, as the mode's description says "combat is often best avoided" 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Livio Persemprio said:

survivor is too easy, that's why it could use your help in balancing in a challenging way that revolves around combat. i don't inderstand. 

 

 

 

 

commodities and tools are the reason you have to leave base and scavenge even months in after the apocalypse, that's why they are so rare. it's unrealistic nut provides gameplay balance. 

 

 

 

here we go again. you're not supposed tl be able to clear a full area alone, and the game will be further balanced in that direction, so, again, help balance the fighting focused mode if you like to solve problems by fighting. 

it is perfectly doable to sneak around even with a high population, and once you killed them all you are just free to loot, breaking the balance of the game. 

pit together some ideas, make survivor more balanced and enjoy that, there is no shame in playing as you like, but they will never make apocalypse more fight centered. if anything, apocalypse will become even less fighting centered so help where you'd be very very helpful, survivor needs the help of people like you. let apocalypse be the mode where, as the mode's description says "combat is often best avoided" 

Im going to be blunt here, since you dont seem to understand. Id like to preface this with "I do not dislike you as a person" and "I am not attacking you".

 

Please, stop telling me to play the other gamemode and stop telling me I have to play a certain way. I can play the current Apocalypse as it stands, it is not too hard for me and there is nothing there that makes me want to play another mode over Apocalypse. There is nothing preventing me from doing a good job in Apocalypse and you are not required to play the way that you play to survive in Apocalypse. Im not going to play Survivor any more than I already have and I am not going to be providing feedback for it as its a mode thats meant to be easier. I do not care if the description says "Combat is often best avoided" because im going to participate in the combat regardless. I do not care what you would like me to play or where you want my feedback. 

 

I am an Apocalypse player and it is the mode I prefer, im going to play it how I want and im going to express my opinions and ideas about it because my feedback isnt less valid because you say so. I have been streaming this game on twitch nearly every day since Build 41 showed up on IWBUMS, I have enjoyed most of it and found a few problems and i am providing my feedback on those problems and giving my opinion on those problems so they are at least noted. 

 

If you tell me to play on Survivor again im going to lose my mind, there is absolutely no need to keep throwing "go play survivor instead" and "youre not supposed to play like that". Even if I approached Apocalypse with a stealth focus in mind, it would still have a lot of the issues I have talked about in my post. 

 

Sorry for being so blunt but talking to you about this is like talking to a brick wall when you just throw "go play survivor" or "go provide feedback for survivor" in response to everything I have to say. There is no need for that as im of the opinion that "Survivor" and "Builder" should not even be options to begin with. I am of the opinion that games like this should have The intended mode and then other options available. For me, Apocalypse is that intended mode. If you need another example for this, Halo 3 has a difficulty selection of Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary. Heroic has the subtext "This is the way halo is meant to be played." and I feel Apocalypse fills this role properly. Apocalypse is my favorite mode by far and im in no ways saying "Apocalypse is bad" with my post. I am always wishing for games improvement and PZ is no exception and I will continue to support and hope for this games improvement as time goes on. 

 

 

I hope I put your argument to rest and I hope I can get some actual opinions on the rest of the main post above.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

glad to put it to rest with one last word from me, with the same pre assumption of not being a personal attack. 

 

apocalypse can be played right now with a combat oriented mindset because it's still flawed. as the game evolves, the devs will keep doing whatever they can to prevent the mode to be played the way you do now. why would you go through that?

i'll also add that the devs repeatedly stated that they do not wish for survivor to be easier, they just wish for it to be more combat oriented, but without feedback they's just so much they can do. 

those two things above are facts, so it's only natural to suggest you to go that way, but it's not like my life depends on you realizing it. 

 

apocalypse is NOT the way the game is meant to be played, it's just a mode for people that prefer problem solving over brute force, and every game mode is going to be improved over their ideal playstyle. those are not my words, those are the devs words, words that you chose to ignore, especially the "combat is often best avoided" part, so your feedback on that regard is wasted time for them, i'm sorry to put it so bluntly but you need to stop feeling like apocalypse is a superior mode provide help that is actually needed where is needed. survivor won't ever improve if people keep treating it like this

 

 

you had your argument, i had mine, now let's leave space for others to say what they think, in respect of the devs' vision of the game 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reason the power shutoff is forced to 14 days is because that's when the game lore dictates it shuts off in standard modes. That won't be randomized. 

The only thing we'd reasonably consider changing here is respawns (we're ultimately fine with having it longer than 16 hours to trigger 'em). 

 

Rest of it? Make your own custom Apocalypse in Sandbox and play that. I know that's the answer you don't want to hear, but that's why we have sandbox, as we're acutely aware that anything we do with the default playstyles will not please everyone. We like how it plays, as is, and the vast majority of players seem fine with it. Thus, changing it drastically is just shooting ourselves in the foot in that regard.

 

Livio has it right. The concept of an intended mode is dead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Ziggylata said:

Ive been playing a lot of Apocalypse and a lot of derivatives of Apocalypse on Sandbox and after giving it the most playtime out of all the modes, I would like to voice my opinion on some of the aspects that get on my nerves and the things I prefer about it over the other gamemodes. Ill be going through the aspects from top to bottom via the sandbox options and then talk about some specific stuff that really doesnt work I feel.

 

Please keep in mind, these are my thoughts and are open to debate but I generally am looking to improve the experience overall.

 

 

  • Zombie Count: High

While I feel this is okay, it really has to do with the next bullet point that makes this an unweildy thing to have.

  • Zombie Distribution: Urban Focused 

This doesnt seem to be working right in some areas, the first area being Muldraugh being one of the most swamped areas to start in ever. Theyre spread out so evenly that stealth to anywhere you might want to go is next to impossible as an average character and even then its quite crazy. You also cant really fight because of the loot (which ill get down to there) not allowing you to really fight any groups larger than 2 or 3 if youre being generous.

 

  • Water/Electricity Shutoff: 0-30 days 
  • *DEV* Water/ElecShutModifier: 14

This is something I feel shouldnt be here like this, for anyone who doesnt know, there is a secret modifier for Apocalypse that makes water and electricity on apocalypse go off on day 14 nearly 100% of the time if not 100% of the time. This takes off some of the randomness the game is supposed to have and id like to see it back to the way it used to be where its actually 0-30 days. 

 

  • Darkness During Night: Normal

I feel that the night levels are way way too bright, its not dark at all outside and whenever I play sandbox I almost always turn this down to Dark or Pitch Black. Night-time without cat-eyes is bright and flashlights have nearly no place. Not only that, but I feel the zombies can see you just as easy at night as they can in the daytime and this is another thing id like to see modified, a risk/reward ratio for going out at night where you cant see but neither can they. 

 

  • Farming Speed: Normal

In my opinion, this should be slowed down. Cabbage and other fast-growing crops give so much food so fast that my Apocalypse character has absolutely no need to go out and loot, as it stands ive got 3 or 4 freezers full of farming food and im only 3 months in. 

 

  • Sadistic AI Director
    • Helicopter: Once
    • Meta Event: Sometimes

This needs some work. Helicopter is one of the most anxiety events you can have happen near your home and it only happens once. As I put in my point above, I spend a lot of time not going out on Apocalypse once im set up, the Meta Events do not contribute or affect my home-life in any way and im not too far away from an urban area. Helicopter would be a great problem to throw at me but it only happens one time. I feel there are not enough late-game meta events to challenge my comfortable home life, theres not enough to happen to anyone when youre getting towards the late game. The only thing I can think of would be Winter, provided you dont have the food you need (which I do and you could supplement with foraging, fishing or trapping). Its one of my biggest game-fatigue gripes I have with this game and theres a few more ill be talking about.

 

  • Decaying Corpse Health Impact: Normal

You can expand this a lot. Currently, this doesnt really do anything or impact the game at all unless theyre literally in your house. I feel even walking through corpse-dense areas could and should give you diseases and illnesses, this would make "prone to illness" less of a free point trait and resilient might be taken more than not at all. Currently, the only corpse management I ever do is outside my immediate living area. 

 

  • Loot Rarity
    • Food: Rare
    • Weapon: Rare
    • Other: Rare

Oh boy, where do I even begin here. Im going to be blunt here, there is no reason my starting house should have 1 battery and some makeup in it. Thats not a joke. There is a lot that needs to be done with the loot as I often find it frustrating to not find a single article of clothing in multiple houses, to not find any kitchen knives or can openers in any houses at all. To go through a warehouse and find that 50% or more of the boxes inside do not have a single item inside. Theres a lot of work here, im not griping too much at the food or weapons (although its a bit silly) but theres a lot of work I feel needs to be done with the commodity items, like, by a lot. The early-game is a lot of going from house to house, hoping you dont get spotted by a group and hoping you find even just one single good item so I can defend myself without spamming shove. Its not unfair, its not cheap, its just extremely tedious and RNG reliant. 

 

  • Clothing Degradation: Normal

I think this needs to be slowed down but not as much as the "slow" option does. On normal, only about 6 hours will propel my clothes into the dirtiest and bloodiest they can be. On Slow, I can go nearly a week before I hit the same point.

 

  • Weapon Multihit (off)

This is complicated, I like this being off. However, id like to see some experimentation. What ive found is when youre playing and get swarmed by 2 or 3 at the same pace (which is doable to fight off), the best way to deal with it is to spam shove until one or two of them fall over so you can actually attack one of them. If you want to run away, you need to spam shove until you get a window of opportunity most of the time. I dont want to hit multiple zombies at the same time, but maybe shoving two at the same time would make it a lot less reliant on spamming shove until something just works out. This is something that would desperately need to be tested as I feel it might not work out or might make the game too easy, but the situation I have described is a common one.

 

  • Cars in general

I dont know much about cars but for me, I think the spawn rate is a bit too low, theres not a lot of vehicles that just, exist, at all. Id be fine if there were a lot of broken ones but there just arent that many in the world at all, I like cars in the urban settings just for the atmosphere they give, making the world feel more tangible to me.

 

  • Car Alarm Frequency: Extremely Rare

Ive never even seen this happen by default.

 

  • Zombie Lore
    • Zombie House Alarm Triggering (off)

I just dont get this one, any reason for this? This is something I turn on when im playing sandbox. I just like it when zombies can shamble out of a house and I walk in and the alarm goes off. Theyre still people, theyre just dead... People...

 

THE BIG ONE

  • Respawn Hours: 72
  • Respawn Unseen Hours: 16

This is too much, this is way way way too much. I can best describe this with an example. My apocalypse character lives on the edge of town, so town is on cells im not on most of the time. There is no incentive to kill or clear out the town ever because the hordes and hordes I might wipe with my shotgun will just respawn in a few days at most. Theres no reason to do it. By extension, theres no reason to ever go in town because of this. My apocalypse character looted every building in Rosewood and now theres no reason to ever walk over there. Lately, when I make a sandbox preset, I generally turn this up to 1 month or more. Its just too much and its my biggest fatigue problem in PZ right now.

 

 

Now that ive gone over the apocalypse options, id like to address a few things that bug me a bit here and there.

 

One thing ive noticed with the new anims are the limited walking animations and lunging animations and standing animations. I know theyre hard to do, but having a lot more variety in these improves the immersion, standing anims are the worst in this regard. All zombies have the same standing idle animation and it really stands out. Sprinters should also not sprint when theyre unalerted by something (I made another thread on this but its easy to just throw in here).

 

Combat, ive talked about the combat briefly when talking about "weapon multihit" but something new has risen from the current new combat and anim systems. Animation-Canceling. Anim-Canceling is something that was posted on a Wood Axe thread asking to reduce the endurance usage and improve the weapon overall. Someone posted a video of anim-canceling and its use in combat and anim-canceling makes it go from one of the worst weapons into one of the best weapons nearly instantly. Ive tested this myself and it works with all weapons and but best used with the sledgehammer and wood axe because of their slower swings. Generally it works like this. Holding CTRL enters the combat stance. If your weapon is in the swing state and not recovery and you let go of CTRL and move your character away (easiest to do in the opposite direction), your character will interrupt the swing animation allowing you to attack faster and negate the full 1 second recovery time after a swing. It also allows you to move away and recover to a safe distance for group fighting. This can be done with all weapons, like ive said, but its generally unreliable with faster-swinging weapons as you can only interrupt the weapon mid-swing and not in recovery. 

Ill be honest here, I like this but its not intended and it probably doesnt fit the PZ vision. I like it because it adds a tech-skill but it also makes combat super reliable and super strong. It also lets you use two more weapons that function different than every other weapon in the game, at the cost of a ton of endurance use (seriously, even with level 9 fitness, sledgehammer can only swing about 5 or 10 times before you start to be exerted.) Id like to see this explored rather than outright removed. 

 

 

 

Thank you for reading. I know this is a big post. I ask if you respond to something, please quote the portion of text youre replying to so its easier to discuss and explore what works and what doesnt, whats "just my opinion" and whats viewed as an actual problem.

I care a lot about this game and I remember when I got it on Desura, development of this game may be slow but it holds a special place in my heart. I want to see it be the best it can and improving the default gamemode would be a great start for building a lot of replay ability.

one thing that i definitely agree here is about triggering alarms by zombies,they should defaultly be able to trigger them,after all one of the priorities is to keep realism in this game

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, MrTrololo said:

one thing that i definitely agree here is about triggering alarms by zombies,they should defaultly be able to trigger them,after all one of the priorities is to keep realism in this game

It won't be re-enabled until performance issues with a ton of zombies pathing to one place are sorted. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...