Elorh's big post of ideas

[Elorh]

Hi everyone! Especially for Zomboid developers :3

 

I love your work and I have seen how well you take care of the community during all these years, especially with the ideas that many of us have written in this forum. I have found that you improve the game every day and you like many of our contributions, that is why I have been accumulating some ideas for about a year now, which I wanted to share with all of you with the intention of making the game grow even more.
 

It's possible that many of them are already written in the forum, I don't know, but I share them as I wrote them when I thought about them. I am an intermediate English speaker, so I apologize if something is not well explained. The ideas are separated into blocks for easy reading.

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Construction and furniture:
-Let the player check the condition of the wooden doors/walls, and repair them with sufficient level of carpentry. 

For obvious reasons.

-To be able to pass over counters and furniture such as sofas. 

It's horrible when you get stuck because of a sofa and coffee table, and you are terribly eaten by a zombie family.

-Some parts of current furniture cannot be moved or collected, such as some kitchen shelves, gas station countertops and furniture, and last but not the least, the composter.

Yes, for me the composter is really important, I like to take my shit from refuge to refuge.

-To be able to put objects on the tables, such as pots on the countertops, cans on the tables. What's the point of a table if you can't put anything on it?
Okay, I just found out from your latest updates that you guys are working on it. I love you. Really. I do.

-When I collect exterior lights from other buildings, and relocate them to other buildings a.k.a. my own refuge, they stop working for good. Is it necessary to install them in a specific way? This should be clearer. Perhaps with level 2 electrician skill you could see the connections of a building with a specific appliance. That would be fantastic!

-The same thing happens to me with facilities that require water, such as sinks, drinking fountains, etc. I know you have to install them to work, and have a water source on top, as I have seen in a video, but I think that with carpentry skills you could implement a way to get the water to wherever you want. An example of this problem: I installed a sink outside my shelter, an ordinary building, so that I could quickly access the water and fill my watering cans faster. Obviously the water was not coming out, and I wondered if we would to be able to use pipes or something similar. It would be logical and a very interesting new mechanic for the game.
Yes, I have played Minecraft a lot with a pipe mod (Buildcraft). I love to play with liquids... Don't look at me that way ...

 

-Roofs: I would love to be able to build roofs for my shelters, not just put up a flat plank. Oh, and I would love to have the ability to destroy all types of roofs for some buildings. Example: I like to farm inside buildings, which are well-protected places where zombies cannot easily enter. Unfortunately I had to use a mod from the workshop to be able to remove the rooftops, and I wanted to know if it could be implemented in the game.

-I think construction should be slower and louder. At least at low levels. That would be more fun and offer a bigger reward to players who manage to build their shelter or safe zone. Right now I think it's exaggeratedly easy.
Right now in my game, I have managed to seal off and surround half the town of West Point in a relatively short time. But for a human it should be a daunting task. Maybe I'm superman!

-Being able to remove the mattresses from the beds, so that they can be transported quickly to the shelters without having the ability to move furniture or need tools.
I find it really immersive for the first few nights or months, until you develop your carpentry.

-Is it possible to climb the vertical stairs that I see in some buildings? I've never known how, it should be like climbing with ropes. It would be great if it could be implemented and built with the skill of metalworking.

-Attics: Watching American movies, I see that almost all the houses in the towns have attics, with vertical stairs, and it is always very scary to go up to those places. It would be fun to be able to live high up and pick up the ladder.

-Decorating houses and shelters should influence the happiness of the characters. Having plants, vases, libraries or more types of furniture would be like a minigame, on the one hand you decorate your home, and on the other you make your character feel better.

-I have seen in the post office, a piece of furniture called "Standing vault". It is useless, you can not open it, or save things. It would be interesting to enable an inventory for it.

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Immersion:
-Cause the beds to get dirty if you sleep in dirty or bloody clothes.
Personally, that would make me very sad. And a lot of disgust.

-Sleep badly, or be uncomfortable if you sleep with clothes, backpacks and weapons, or with a lot of weight.

-Suffer pain the next day if you sleep with backpacks.

It seems obvious to me, but I'm sure you all do it.

-Some way to identify something rotten, bad smells inside a building. A character status that indicates that the room smells bad (Corpses or food).

-More voices. Screaming, heavy breathing after running, or when you have anxiety.
This would be wonderful for immersion. Breathing sounds and little screams when opening the door and finding a zombie.

-The floor ends up getting dirty, turning gray. Throughout the months, the inside of buildings should be dusty and dirty or full of plants inside, unless you clean it. It is interesting because in addition to the damage to the buildings, it would create a real sense of the passage of time.

-Cleaning the home and surroundings, or getting sad.

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Gameplay:
-Other ways to increase happiness (Music, playing instruments like the piano, guittar, etc).  I also don't understand why my character gets sad when he reads a book inside the house, or is simply inside the shelter.
Ok, studying is boring, but my character is going to want to commit suicide by reading skills books.

-Dirty fabrics or ripped sheets are not machine washed, I must do it by hand. Why?

-Colorful scraps for clothing. They are all white! Is there a possibility that they had the color of the clothes that are torn?
The world is full of colors, don't live in black and white, please!

-Mechanical and metalworking skills should be used to create pipes and electrical installations. It would be great if with a high level, you could bring civilization back to buildings, especially when playing with survivors (NPCs).

It would be great to be able to use the automatic garage doors, and create automatic doors for players, especially when driving vehicles. With the skills of metalworking, carpentry, and electricity, they could be disassembled and built.

-Make improvised gloves with cloth to remove window glass.
It would be the first thing I would do if I had to go through a window full of broken glass.

-That the containers have compartments, not that everything is scrambled. A closet could have drawers, to divide everything.

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Lights:

Yes, I know this is more complicated, but I also think it would be amazing for the game. If the light could be improved so that it could enter buildings through windows, the light from streetlights, or from a player carrying a flashlight, would have a great impact on the visual aspect of the game.
 

-Flickering lights in the corridors of some buildings. The possibility of light bulbs burning out.
 

-I recommend that the light of the flashlights be different. On the one hand that darkens the environment outside of the light provided by the flashlight, and what it illuminates, that illuminates it more and with a rounded shape on the walls.

I remember seeing an amazing image on Steam, posted by some player, where the light had been modified. A room with a piano was shown, filled with candles, as daylight poured in through the window. IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

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Weapons:
-To be able to throw any weapon or object.

 

-The bags have a strange animation when equipped and fighting. They appear to be stiff with extra strong glue.

 

-Being able to defend yourself with furniture, such as a chair.

 

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Health:
-I recommend to improve the health system. When I make a small cut when falling, I almost always have severe lacerations. Hit the wall, severe laceration. I fall when jumping over a fence, severe laceration. I propose that there are slight lacerations, because it does not seem normal to me to bleed out from abrasions.
If it was like this game, we would never have survived prehistory.

 

-It would be nice to have new traits to earn more Fitness / Strength points. That is, be an athlete, or watch fitness television programs that help you. The impact on the game of exercising is negligible. In a game of 4 months of play I was not able to go up a level, exercising almost every day.

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New animations:
-Drag corpses.

-Charge running against a zombie to throw it to the ground, being able to hurt you.

-Take a look over walls or fences before jumping over them.
It's funny how the character jumps to the other side of a wall even seeing that 5 zombies are waiting for him on the other side.

-The possibility of climbing on cars, either on hoods or cars roofs.
Who hasn't seen a scene like this in a movie or videogame?

-When you jump through a window, if there is a car under it, it would be great to be able to land on the roof of the car and not get hurt.

-Animations to sit on chairs, sofas and beds to rest (furniture in general).

-To be able to lie on floors and beds. I don't know if the character can sleep on the floor, I've never tried.

-Showers: It would be great to have animation when you open a shower and be able to see the water coming out. I also think showering should be a must to get rid of dirt. The animation of cleaning in the sink is great, but there are bathtubs and showers ... Also, the sound of the water could attract zombies, and that would be a lot of fun.

-Be able to push doors to prevent zombies from entering.

 

-Transport: In addition to the backpacks, which has been incredible, I recommend creating shopping carts, as if it were a small vehicle with which you could also push zombies and carry more objects than with a backpack. They could be repaired with metalwork.
 

-Climb on furniture. Being able to climb on wooden boxes, cars, etc., to be able to reach low roofs, windows, or even see what is on the other side of a wall.

 

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Sounds:

-Zombies sometimes growl like women, and sometimes like men. It does not match properly.

-Sometimes, within my safe areas, totally fenced, screams of people being attacked as if they were next to me. It's very weird. I recommend that if an area is fully protected or fenced, certain sounds cannot be played.

 

-The sounds of the vehicles are very annoying. They have a very unreal motor loop, and driving them is a bit annoying at times.

 

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Travel the world:

-Navigate the river. Yes, I know there is a cool mod out there, but it would be great if the character could swim or ride in little boats.
 

-Planes: It would also be great to be able to fly in small agricultural planes, or helicopters if you could find enough gasoline. The map is huge, and I love it, but I am aware that I will not be able to reach certain places practically ever, and maybe being able to fly would help a lot to enjoy the whole map, especially in multiplayer, when creating multiple shelters.

 

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Farming and gardening: (For me, one of the most entertaining activities in the game)

 

-Possibility of having a lawn mower to cut the grass quickly when it grows, it would also make noise. The mower could be interesting to disassemble with electronics, or to make noise and attract zombies.

-I recommend to reduce xp by farming enormously, in 2 months I have reached the maximum using books. I think it is not well compensated.

 

-Farming skill should allow you to grow different types of plants depending on the level, so that there are many more crops and you can farm in different seasons if you have a high level.
More types of crops. The Hydrocraft developer did an excellent job introducing many types of plants that greatly enriched the game. Perhaps this developer can contribute something to the game officially.

 

-More types of crops, not only soil, to be able to grow spices in pots to add to food, such as thyme, basil, parsley, etc., that bring happiness to the food.

-With the skill, to be able to make better fertilizers.

-Introduce fruit trees to the world in the generation of the world. It would be very interesting to go and look for seasonal fruit in the forest.

-Water with hoses, as long as you have a building nearby.

-Using different garden tools should improve the speed of planting / collecting food.

 

-Being able to plant flowers and decorative plants to improve the character's morale.

 

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Jobs and skills:
-I recommend to improve electrician so that he can really work with electricity in buildings.

It seems that it only works for moving refrigerators and creating low impact traps in the game.

-Plumbing to distribute the water with metalworking skills.

I think it is very necessary and interesting. New mechanics!

-Doctors and nurses really have little use in the game, as the first aid skill does not seem to have much of an impact. I recommend developing medical tools to operate if necessary, and the introduction of more medical centers or hospitals, with different rooms and uses. It would be great if an NPC or player is injured and needs an emergency operation that can only be treated on a hospital operating table.

 

-All professions should have some unique ability, not just the distribution of points, but something that only they can do, for the purpose of playing online.

It is not normal that reading a couple of books and doing a few activities, you already have the experience of a professional who has worked on it for years.

 

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NPCs:

-Set random origins of survivors. Example: A traffic accident on the road, if you have bandages, you can save the driver and help him recover at your base. If you do, you will earn his trust.
Example 2: Finding a family trapped in a house surrounded by zombies. If you help them, they will join your group.
This would greatly encourage exploration of the great map you have created.

 

-Randomize the survivors and their locations so that each game is completely different. There may be many in jail in one game, but none in the next, and they are all zombies.

 

-Allow NPCs to have many kinds of stories. Have a chance to gain their trust and have small conversations with them. Develop friendships and relationships, in a way that increases the character's morale, or sadness if they die.

Allow the community to write these stories and use workshop. This would help a lot to grow the game.

 

-Allow job assignments based on the characteristics and abilities of the survivors. Experience gain and levels of the survivors.

-Ability to establish search groups with NPCs that accompany you, or who go on their own to find resources. Always with the possibility that they will not return or die in the process, and then you can find their corpse or zombie.

-Socializing with the NPCs should yield unique morale states, and specific traits such as being lonely, or sociable should be created.

 

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Community:
-Encourage the community to get more involved in the project with better tools. Games like Minecraft, for example, were a real hit thanks to player-created mods.

I think that if the map creation tools were easier to use, I think that a large number of players would dedicate themselves to creating more and more content, making the game grow without stopping. It is already happening and now they are difficult to use, so imagine if they are more accessible.

 

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Music:
-Being able to listen to cassettes, CDs or videotapes with the music that the players have in a personal folder. It would be quite interesting.

 

Final recommendation for players:

I love Project Zomboid music, but when you've played over 400 hours like me, sometimes you prefer to listen to other things.
I highly recommend listening to the Lustmord albums. They are perfect for this game as they completely transform your atmosphere, to the point of being scary.


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Many thanks to the entire community, and especially the developers, who have created the best survival and zombie game by far.

It may not be the game with the best graphics on the market, but the world you have created, the mechanics, the gameplay, the setting, and everything that you continue to develop, makes it a game thousands of times better than the last generation games that come out every year on Steam, that you play once and then forget about them.

Your game is a piece of art. Thank you, and I will continue to recommend your game to every friend who wants to have a great experience.

Love u all.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Elorh