A sprkng Review

[Bossdrive]

This thread is an extension of a previous conversation with sprkng regarding game design.

 

sprkng took the time and effort to provide a thoughtful response to my argument, and I think it deserves to be explored. Besides, it's rude to turn your head and walk away while someone is talking to you.

 

That being said, I think both of us enjoy having these kinds of discussions.

 

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I think there are basically two things we disagree about:

 

1. How hard the game should punish you for making mechanical mistakes (pressing the right button, moving the mouse to right position, timing, etc.). We just have different opinions and there is no problem with that. I gave some arguments for why I think this is better for the game but you don't have to agree.

 

So it seems that you do make a distinction between the two kinds of mistakes that I delineated in my original post.

 

Mistake type 1 - bad decision-making/playing reckless.

 

and

 

Mistake type 2 - keyboard/mouse mismanagement (mechanical).

 

 

The question then is, should the game punish you equally for both types of mistakes? It seems to me that the answer lies with the game design. Is the game designed to challenge both your overall strategy and your keyboard/mouse skills? 

 

This is certainly the case with the RTS genre. RTS games are designed for competition in which you match your strategy and mechanical kills against an opponent.

 

But PZ is not an RTS, it is fundamentally a survival simulation game. And simulation games are designed to simulate the real world.

 

Does it make sense for a simulation game to challenge your mechanical skills?

 

Someone mentioned in the other thread that 'mistake type 2' is not a problem for him and that I'm "over-blowing" the issue. Well, that may be the case for many people who possess good mechanical skills, but does that kind of criticism resolve the problem?

 

From my experience, all of my deaths had been the result of 'mistake type 2'. I play extremely cautious. My friend describes my play style as tediously boring. He, on the other hand, plays like Rambo, yet he always manages to last longer than I. 

 

I think the disagreement between you and I rests on 'mistake type 2' and whether or not it should be a natural component of the game.      

 

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Luckily there are a ton of game settings we can play around with so that everyone can play the game in a way they enjoy. My wife, who plays PZ a lot more than me, also makes occasional mistakes when fighting so she just uses slightly different settings when she's playing alone.

 

PZ does many things right, and this is one of them. It provides you with a vast array of tools to tailor the game in any way you desire. But again, any changes I were to make in the settings is just a way for me to circumvent the problem I delineated above. I'm just attempting to manipulate the settings to mitigate the flaw that is inherent in the game design.

 

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2. quick edit: I re-read your first post and it seems like you're on board with player deaths are caused by your own mistakes, but several times after that you said something similar to "you're always a dice roll away from death", which sounds like you think you're dying due to no fault of your own. I think it's more correct to say "you're always a mistake AND a dice roll away from death" because the dice won't come out until after you make that mistake.

Edited 22 hours ago by sprkng

Sure, I agree with this. Anything I've said about RNG is always in context to my original post. It's very possible that I might have expressed things poorly.

[sprkng]

I feel honored, but I have a feeling that this thread is probably getting locked as soon as enigmagrey sees it  It sounds like you're continuing a thread he just locked, and even though I don't fully agree with his decision to do so, this might come across as a bit disrespectful to the moderators.  Would probably have been wiser to give it a more neutral title, like "some thoughts about difficulty in zombie survival simulators", and try to minimize references to the locked thread

 

But lets have a constructive discussion about game design and see what happens.

 

3 hours ago, Bossdrive said:

But PZ is not an RTS, it is fundamentally a survival simulation game. And simulation games are designed to simulate the real world.

Weeeell I would rather call it a survival horror game which aims for a fairly high level of detail and realism. I don't think PZ has the level of realism that I would expect from a simulation, and I don't think the devs are aiming for that either. I even replied to another suggestion today saying that game play is more important than 100% realism in PZ, referring to the suggestion guidelines as why I believe this is the opinion of the devs and not just me.

 

3 hours ago, Bossdrive said:

Does it make sense for a simulation game to challenge your mechanical skills?

I would say in general it makes sense if the thing being simulated is mechanically challenging. A helicopter simulator should be hard to fly because a real helicopter is. Fighting a zombie IRL is probably more difficult than it is in PZ

 

Also combat in PZ is not mechanically challenging for me, though I understand it is for you and some other people. If I get bitten or scratched it's because I did something really bad, and I think I deserve it despite hoping I will survive. The high stakes and the fact that death is always a possibility if you screw up adds a lot to the survival horror feeling for me.

 

Judging from the other thread there are many others like me who think the game has a good balance right now, but ideally there should be an option that makes the game perfectly balanced for you too. I think the reason some people seemed to get a little upset was because it sounded like you want to change the game for everybody to make it more accommodating for your play style.

 

I could probably have thought of more things to write but I need to go to bed, got work (from home) tomorrow.

[Moloch Horridus]

So are you saying that something should be done to mitigate in game deaths due to player fumbling with their preferred controller?
If so, what? Your suggestions in the original thread would just make the game easier and more gamey  for everyone by introducing mechanic of switching clothes to get another free pass from mistakes.

Project Zomboid isn't an RTS game, you're right, but it still is a game with real time action and these kind of games have always an aspect of player driven control mistakes.

[EnigmaGrey]

 You can already see this conversation is as circular as the last.

You’re just going to have to accept your mistakes get characters that you’re invested in killed; that some degree of randomness is part of the experience.

 

Lock-y, lock-y.