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I don't like where this game is heading to.


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1 hour ago, EnigmaGrey said:

I think the answer to an awful lot of the gripes here is unlearning multiple years of habit rather than blaming the game for it.

 

I'm yet to come across this alleged bug though my play-style is covert.

 

It just sounds like people are desperate to feel like Rambo, making bad decisions then complaining that the game screwed them over.

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1 hour ago, OffitMan said:

 

I'm yet to come across this alleged bug though my play-style is covert.

 

It just sounds like people are desperate to feel like Rambo, making bad decisions then complaining that the game screwed them over.

 

The two I'm thinking of (which I'd like gone, even if I see them ending the same way regardless of how stupid it can look) are these:

* You get between two zombies. One hits you and you fall back. The other zombie hits you and you keep falling back. Over and over. It takes forever to die; and, 

* You get between two zombies. One hits you. You auto-defend yourself. Another zombie hits you. You keep slowly auto defending yourself, over and over.

Either way you eventually die.

 

The problem I have is the word "stun lock" describes anything that has a slight pause to long, annoying chain reactions like the above. When it's more minor it feels an awful lot people are saying they "want to go back" to the way it used to be. It ends up feeling like a catch-all for losing the ability to run through zombies mildly inconvenienced and to be able to keep moving and fighting while being bit or scratched. That's the vibe I get from most of the comments here, unfortunately.

 

That said, there there are certainly examples in PZ's current animation set that need to be cleaned up (e.g. the long pause after jumping over a tall fence, which was fixed recently), but the idea you're going to get DP'd by the undead and conquer them anyway seems to be where a lot of these complaints want to lead us. And well, we're not going back to build 40, lads. If that's not your aim, then just ignore this bit, I'm not talking about you.  :D

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Yes, the current IWBUMS builds cranked up the difficulty of the game. Yes, I too, have trouble surviving long in survivor mode. Even the more "calm" builder mode had me dying because I made poor (... or plain stupid) decisions. It's very easy to get too cocky, and it generally comes back too you like a rotating quintain.

 

But playing with the sandbox mode is a great way to learn the good strategies at your own pace: There's all sorts of options to weaken the zombies, make them less aware of your presence, more stupid, less dangerous when attacking from behind and so on. The new build is more difficult, it doesn't mean that you have to be as good as you were on the previous build.

 

It can feel great to be the badass warrior, slaying dozens of zombies a day (like in How To Survive 2), but it's also super cool to feel vulnerable, always on tension to save your life. It's two different approaches of the zombie genre. Like you have 2 approaches on the Alien franchise: you have the original Alien movie where the last survivor of a crew tries not to be slain by a deadly Xenomorph, alone in space, by hidding and being more smart than the creature. And you have the Aliens movie (the second movie) where a team of soldiers kills more Xenomophs than you can count. One is a horror movie, the other one is an action movie. Both are about Xenomorphs, but they are very different and still great in their own genre.

Project Zomboid clearly took survivial horror choice (after all, since my first try years ago, I always read the sentence "This is how you died" when I start a new game). Some other games took the action choice (like How To Survive), and that's fine, but it's just not what PZ is about.
I think that complaining about PZ becoming less forgiving is loosing of sight* what game genre it is.

 

*Like how Visceral Games lost of sight that Dead Space was a surivial horror licence when they developped the 3rd game, huhuhu. :P

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A different problem that's not for everyone, but is certainly for me, is that I have an older PC and b41 tries to peg my system even when turning all the rendering to potato mode.  I'm hoping there are plans for reimplementing a b40-style option to only fully render the nearest so many character/npc models while offering a less-specific render for the remainder so we can keep some of our low-end FPS going stronger for longer.

 

Since I'm griping, I'll share one I know is an easy fix everyone will enjoy - can we make the inventory expand/contract arrows on the left edge of the line items ... wider?  Like, a lot wider?  Please?

Edited by Dcar
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Okay, so, I've spent time making this game work more reasonably on my hardware and I have specific complaints against b41.  It's a bit of a rant, and I'm sorry about that.

 

<rant>

The player is expected to shove zombies and stomp their heads as a starting combat mechanic, except it's not feasible to do this when there is more than one zombie which can see you. Even if you don't have bad attack timing, the b41 character animation makes facing the correct direction and standing in the exact right place a chore because minor character collisions can rotate the player character enough to put you at a bad angle, and being at a bad angle means you'll miss your push attack while being rewarded with a bite wound every single time. Supposing you do find yourself in a place where you can stomp through several zombies, you'll quickly find yourself barefoot as the durability of your shoes makes you wonder if they were made of thin strips of old wood. You'll be putting on zombie shoes several times in your first game day just to keep shoes on your feet. Good luck losing zombies around buildings to spread them out because the initial population prohibits the player from not being actively tracked by several zombies once you leave your starting house and they don't individually follow you long enough to be able to kite a significant population away from any point of interest with anything less than a considerable time investment. Maybe you'll get lucky and find a car with a key and some gas in it, but you'll quickly realize using vehicles is a mistake in b41 since fuel mileage feels 1/10th as good as it was in b40. Even assuming you had a full tank, you can expect your tires to fall apart in about a game day of driving regardless of whether you stay on pavement and drive responsibly the entire time.

</rant>

 

Design suggestions:

1 - The player character should auto-face the nearest upright zombie when making a push attack, assuming you're more or less facing one in the first place.  Assuming there are no upright zombies, the stomp attack should auto-face the nearest zombie since it also moves the player a slight amount and that creates a problem.

2 - Various item/equipment durabilities need to last a lot longer.  I also realize fuel mileage in b40 was pretty high, but b41 should partially approach b40 levels unless you're planning on adding a way to refine a fuel of some kind (ethanol & etc)

3 - Initial zombies should be at 1/10 (or less) of their current starting population.

3a - Increasing individual zombie difficulty would be reasonable to maintain the world difficulty.  The ratio of zombies against the sum of beds & vehicles is kind of crazy.

3b - Zombies cluster too aggressively.  Kiting a few of them around the back side of a house and checking on them a few minutes later commonly finds that they've recruited quite a few friends.  This doesn't add up because they weren't already clustered to their desired level after the player character apparently cowered in their house until supplies ran out in the first place.  It goes against behavioral expectations based on the environmental cues.

3c - Ramping up the overall zombie population over time would be reasonable since it'd emulate the zombies realizing some of their friends are wandering in a certain direction for some unknown reason (some of them found a living human) while also pushing the idea that the player can have a chance to loot something halfway useful before being set upon by the local horde instead of being set upon right away.  Alternatively, start with a lot of human survivors running around fighting zombies and have that justify the ramping up of the horde over time.

Edited by Dcar
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Just played only some days because i thought the game has MP when i bought it. Waiting for MP before i really wanna start a run on it.

For me it seems the complete fightmechanic is walking backwards and click. This is boring and easy and when you wanna make this gamemechanic any harder without improving the mechanic at all the result will be some very weird unfunny stuff.

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  • 3 months later...

Unsatisfying and/or cheap feeling deaths were relatively rare prior to recent releases, but they've been steadily becoming more common. Awhile back deaths felt mostly deserved. You messed up and now you're dead. Now, there is more of a tendency for death to feel random and less a result of you making a stupid mistake or a poor decision. Either some mechanic that makes your character feel inept and weak, or some weirdness with hits not landing when they look like they should. Until recently I nearly always felt like the changes were moving the game in the right direction, but lately I've been getting more and more concerned.

 

Sometimes I wonder if the lack of engaging late game play in Project Zomboid is making the devs try to make the earlier game more difficult so it takes longer for people to reach that point, if at all. *IF* that is true, or ever becomes true, I would find it concerning because it would be a cover up for a bigger problem. And I've seen quite a few games take this route because it's so much easier than fixing the problem. I hope I'm wrong, and either way there is still time for things to change.

 

I guess if I had to sum it up I would say the game feels like it's going more game-y and less simulation.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, perp23 said:

This is a hardcore game, it is supposed to fuck you. Please stop whining about how a hardcore game is hard.

 

A lot of old school NES games are hard, many because of gameplay and technology limitations and bad controls. That don't mean it's good difficulty.

 

Playing shooters with the AI unleashed to it's full aimbot potential on you is hard, but I doubt most would consider that to be fun.

 

There was a raid boss in World of Warcraft long ago that the devs wanted to be very hard, but they made it so much so that it seemed impossible even for the top guilds worldwide. That was hard, but it wasn't good way to do difficulty.

 

Being a "hardcore" game doesn't excuse all issues, concerns, or opinions automatically. It's just not that simple. Sometimes things are overtuned, insufficiently tested, or just outright have problems that need to be addressed. Being an incomplete game, that is reasonably the default stance for people reporting their experiences. That is half the point of an early access game after all. If everyone took all issues and concerns like a single minded drone or a yes man, the feedback would be useless.

Edited by BoogieMan
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I've only ever played the new build, and I feel like Rambo with Strong and Athletic.  The only thing I feel is "cheap" if I'd even go that far, is when you enter a window with a table in the way and get stuck in the animation for passing over tables, leaving you vulnerable.  I find a crowbar can take 5 zombies at once, which feels pretty Rambo like!

 

The real problem with this game is all the headiest furniture is scattered scarcely throughout the map, so I end up spending the first month driving around picking up fancy counters and fridges and stuff while I study an online map to plan out each item I need for the coziest base.

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RNG should be a very small influencing aspect of failure. If RNG has too large an impact, that is poor game design.

 

The player should always have control - whether that means the situations they put themselves into, or the potential to possess tools to overcome a given aspect of RNG.

 

When RNG strikes, if it impacts failure, that should be because the player made a poor choice, or because they did not currently possess the tools required to overcome the random situation as presented. If you simply fail, "because", that again, is poor game design.

 

I generally only lose characters now to falling. I haven't uncovered exactly why I fall, but it clearly seems to be a chance after a zombie falls over a fence or through a window, to lunge at you, with a chance that that lunge will knock you down.

 

This can be overcome by simply never being near any area in which zombies can fall over things. This is fine, I guess, but then it renders the risk vs. reward of using fences and windows for combat purposes moot. It isn't worth the risk because the risk is death, and death is absolute.

 

This fundamentally renders using terrain like this as without use, except to slow down zombie progression.

 

Now I'm not sure how I feel about that. Perhaps it's a good system to have. Basically this decision literally makes fences and windows only something to slow down zombies - you should never use them to kill zombies.

 

There are many good aspects of good game design here. For example, not knowing what's behind a door but giving you options to nudge the door or whisper to see if there are zombies on the other side.

 

But there are also some poorer design elements, such as having a car that seems to suddenly just shut off randomly, even if it's in good condition. Again, there should be some level of control here (and there may well be that I'm simply not aware of, this is predicated on my understanding). Maybe someone can verify for me if a car can ever randomly shut off if it's in a given condition.

 

I currently have 110.6 hours in the game. When I first started I was dying quickly - usually within the first few hours or after a day or two. In the earliest stages it was due to lack of understanding of the game and it's mechanics/rules. Later as I gained more experience it came from being overzealous and not knowing when to stop. Now though it often feels cheap, like I died to something I felt relatively little control over.

 

In the end my advice to the developers is simply to ensure that they're using RNG as a method of creating randomness in situations, not in failure. I should - in theory - be able to be 100% prepared for anything, given enough care and preparation. RNG should never be able to be fundamentally rolled and I fail under such a circumstance.

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  For instance, i play only in sandbox mode. Reason? I find many of the mechanics too silly and/or unreasonable/unrealistic.

  I could start from the ground up and ask where a zombie gets it's energy from? are they some sort of perpetuum mobile breaking the laws of conservation of energy? - but that would be too evil thing to ask kek.

  Anyway, it feels to me that devs are tuning the difficulty by watching streams done by quite good gamers, In my case, I'm in late 40's and i played practically everything worth playing since late 80's. I have zero interest to prove anything to anyone (myself included) anymore in gaming. I simply play games for fun and killing of my free time. In order to achieve that i greatly prefer to fine tune any and every game aspect exactly to my liking. Some games i modded and balanced for months before playing them for days and having a blast.

  In case of PZ? Bah! - one of the first things i do is click the lunge stuff off - and good riddance.

  All gamers are different when it comes to skill and approach to playing a game. If it wasn't so, we would all be better with being some sort of minmaxing robots instead of being humans.

  There are bad gamers, average ones, good ones and great ones, and all in between. Or like in my case, gamers on painkillers for months with reaction time practically destroyed.

I fine tune my world to my liking, i play slow and stealthy, and you know what? I damn like it. I'm far more concerned with building options being so incredibly limited, than about some mechanic or other that i can just turn off.

 

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15 hours ago, Nardasia said:

This can be overcome by simply never being near any area in which zombies can fall over things. This is fine, I guess, but then it renders the risk vs. reward of using fences and windows for combat purposes moot. It isn't worth the risk because the risk is death, and death is absolute.

 

This fundamentally renders using terrain like this as without use, except to slow down zombie progression.

 

Now I'm not sure how I feel about that. Perhaps it's a good system to have. Basically this decision literally makes fences and windows only something to slow down zombies - you should never use them to kill zombies.

 

 

 

That's exactly it. I guess that they didn't like how it was possible to kill hordes of zeds using fences, and I get that, but addressing it should be done in a more even handed way. As you said, the risk is often just too great, so it can effectively be as through the mechanic doesn't exist. So why does it then? It's like they put it in there, but don't want you to use it.

 

Zeds are dumb and clumsy, but are tough and have vast numbers. Humans are intelligent, more agile, and have tools. Why shouldn't we be able to utilize one of our core strengths? After all, our intelligence and ability to exploit other creatures is what brought to where we are today. Don't want players to murders scores of zombies with little threat with fences? Make it so if enough zombies are crowding up on a fence, it will eventually topple and fall flat on the ground, instead of suddenly endowing the zed with a miraculous burst of speed and cunning, and what seems to be a brief window of invulnerability. You can swing a weapon down on them while lunging and it doesn't seem to connect then they just knock you back and stagger you. How is that so different from other times zombies are prone where you can just stomp their heads in or bash them with a weapon? It's not. It's just a nonsensical mechanic that comes out of no where to punish you for using your brain. Zombie or not, if someone is prone in front of someone standing, they are going to be at a significant disadvantage being so low, slow, using their weapons (hands) for not only attack but locomotion, all while presenting your most vulnerable part, your head. And these are zombies with no self preservation instincts or reflexes. Picture it. You have a weapon in your hand and have someone crawling at you. You are going to be able to attack them before they can attack you, even with shorter weapons. Let alone something like an axe. You could just punt their face. It's like your character is just so shocked and surprised that it happened and was utterly unprepared for it. Every single time that it happens. 

 

It's good they've allowed us to toggle so many things with the settings, but the sheer fact that something like that exists makes makes me concerned that we're moving into the stage of quick and easy fixes over more thoughtful ones.

Edited by BoogieMan
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On 10/16/2021 at 7:21 PM, The Nine Tailed Fox said:

At first I saw this game as the most potential candidate for the worlds best zombie game (not joking) 

 

Personally when it comes to Zombie Games my rating would have been

 

Dying LIght 1 ( Haven't played 2 yet ) 

State of Decay 2  ( excited for state of decay 3 - and yes they fixed a lot of issues on SoD 2 )

MGS Survive - ( It gets a bad rap but has amazing mechanics ) 

 

Then Project Zomboid 

The problem with zomboid in my opinion it feels like it prioritizes realism over fun ( randomly - more on that below )  and quantity over quality.

 

Combat is Essentially RNG 

Zombies randomly attack buildings you are in even if you make no noise.

Inventory is basically an Excel Spread sheet

Then Random applications of Realism 

 

For example so many kitchens have no knives ( Intentional? bug? oversight? no idea ) 

54% of people from Kentucky in real life own a gun. Realistically speaking every other zombie should have a gun or bullet. 

Yet nearly 3,300 tons of fire arms are non existent. 

 

Basically Zomboid is a great idea - having a big open world survival. but I think its focusing on all the wrong places and need to focus on more creative solutions for the player to deal with zombie threat. 

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We may start seeing many of these cutesy mechanics get reworked or removed with the push for late game content. I always assumed these were in place to disguise the fact there's bugger all to do late game.

 

I have noticed with this new unstable patch (perhaps it's always been this way and it's never happened to me before) that the fence lungers can knock you flying from the opposite side of the fence.

Edited by gromit
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I think if you reframe this for yourself from an action game (get in, get close and smash) to a survival game (get out, do not engage and smash only when necessary) the mechanics as-is check out. It lines up better with the threat level shown in early zombie movies and games, before the entire genre was overwhelmed with power trips. The power trip-breaking moments of pz are why I'm here!

 

Ps but yeah the loot distribution (especially guns, kitchen utensils, jars and rope) could be reworked for improved realism.

Edited by trombonaught
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  • 4 months later...
On 2/22/2022 at 4:17 PM, Lailani said:

  For instance, i play only in sandbox mode. Reason? I find many of the mechanics too silly and/or unreasonable/unrealistic.

  I could start from the ground up and ask where a zombie gets it's energy from? are they some sort of perpetuum mobile breaking the laws of conservation of energy? - but that would be too evil thing to ask kek.

  Anyway, it feels to me that devs are tuning the difficulty by watching streams done by quite good gamers, In my case, I'm in late 40's and i played practically everything worth playing since late 80's. I have zero interest to prove anything to anyone (myself included) anymore in gaming. I simply play games for fun and killing of my free time. In order to achieve that i greatly prefer to fine tune any and every game aspect exactly to my liking. Some games i modded and balanced for months before playing them for days and having a blast.

  In case of PZ? Bah! - one of the first things i do is click the lunge stuff off - and good riddance.

  All gamers are different when it comes to skill and approach to playing a game. If it wasn't so, we would all be better with being some sort of minmaxing robots instead of being humans.

  There are bad gamers, average ones, good ones and great ones, and all in between. Or like in my case, gamers on painkillers for months with reaction time practically destroyed.

I fine tune my world to my liking, i play slow and stealthy, and you know what? I damn like it. I'm far more concerned with building options being so incredibly limited, than about some mechanic or other that i can just turn off.

 

I can relate. We are human beings! We have ultimate control over our environments! Even in Project Zomboid. If the game is too hard, make it easier?

 

I stopped toiling over what I don't enjoy. This game allows me to play it exactly the way I want it to be. Almost everything is tweakable, even without mods, which enrich the quantity of an already high-quality experience. 
 

I love the idea of a game beating a person. So delightful! The limitations were meant to be broken, yet watch as the person flounders!

 

Good game and great devs. Glad to see the direction this game is going. More more more!

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I've got 800+ hours in, with about 3/4 in the prior build.  I've got no major issues with where the game is going.  Most of the issues I see complained of above are things that can be dealt with by (1) exercising ordinary caution, or (2) tweaking sandbox settings. 

 

A lot of the complaints seem to be by people who want more of a "badass unstoppable zombie killer" experience and less of an "average Joe / Josephene dropped into a real zombie apocalypse" experience.  Seems like PZ is very much intended to be the latter, and personally, I like it that way.  

 

I was thinking the other day how PZ really reminds me of playing an "old school" pen and paper RPG with a hardass referee who doesn't let his players get away with doing dumb stuff -- that is, who imposes the natural, foreseeable consequences of a player's actions, good or bad, as a neutral arbiter of what would happen in the "real world" (as opposed to being the players' "buddy" or "ally.")  

 

In those games there was no concern about "encounter balance" or "fairness" -- if you did something dumb, you probably died (and if you did survive, it was likely by sheer luck).  It wasn't the ref's job to make the world "fair" or bail you out.  "Oh, you ran into the middle of a camp of 50 bandits yelling and waving your sword, and you died?  What, did you think they were going to line up and fight you one at a time according to Marquess of Queensbury rules?" 

 

I think people forget that the characters in PZ are ordinary folks, most of whom have no experience with violence.  Things like "stun lock" might be annoying to people who want the "Unstoppable Badass" experience, but I don't think they're necessarily unrealistic.  Is it beyond the pale to expect that some ordinary bubba who just got whacked full-force in the face by a walking corpse might be briefly staggered, giving another zed an opening to strike?  I don't think so. Remember, too, that zeds are not limited by any normal human impulse to pull punches due to squeamishness or fear of self-injury -- they are going to hit *hard.*  I think the moral of this story is that PZ is not so much a game about *how* you fight as it is a game of *choosing when* to fight.  Just yesterday in my current playthrough I put down a considerable number of zeds by carefully managing my distance from the target(s) and (more importantly) avoiding engaging numbers I couldn't handle.  Overall, I don't see any major issues with the current melee system (at least nothing that troubles me at the current stage of development). 

 

Kind of an aside on guns (OP didn't mention guns, but some responses do).  I get really tired of complaints about the limited effectiveness of guns.  Suspect most of these complaints are coming from people who (1) want the "unstoppable badass" experience and/or (2) have little or no practical knowledge of / experience with firearms.  "I found a .38 Special revolver with 3 rounds in it, why am I not suddenly the love child of John Wick and Audie Murphy?"  Hitting a lurching, stumbling zed in the head (a comparatively *small* target), even at close range, would be a challenge even for a decent marksman.  Unless carefully coached, people with zero exposure to shooting who pick up a gun for the first time are often *wildly* inaccurate.  Also, in some cases a gun may be sufficiently mechanically complex that just making it ready to fire (inserting a loaded mag, chambering a round, disengaging the safety) can be a genuine challenge for a complete novice.  Reloading under stress is also not easy, and is something that professionals practice regularly.  And, yes, guns are LOUD.  Hearing protection is required at shooting ranges for a reason.  A gunshot in open country can often be heard for MILES, depending on prevailing conditions.  Finally, and probably most importantly, is that defensive use of guns often relies heavily on psychological factors (e.g., being able to fend off multiple attackers just by *showing* a gun, because no sane person wants to risk being shot) that are non-existent with zeds.  You can't fend off a mob of zeds by merely displaying a gun -- the only option is to put down the entire group -- a challenging extreme-stress feat of both marksmanship and reloading skill, which will also likely be ammo-intensive.  In PZ, an untrained person who fires a gun is often inaccurate, and usually ends up drawing a large group that he lacks the skill and/or ammo reserves to deal with, and often dies (assuming he doesn't switch to melee and/or retreat).  Is this fun for someone who wants the "unstoppable badass" experience?  No.  Is it realistic?  I think so.  

 

Honestly my bigger concern with the game's development direction is that it's going to get bogged down in multitudes of overly-complex task-specific UI windows and/or that it's going to try to simulate so many things in such detail that it'll become impossible to simulate them all well.  (For example, the new fluid system looks potentially interesting, but does hit those concerns for me.)  To put it another way, I'd rather they err on the side of accurately simulating a smaller amount of content, as opposed to a shallower simulation of a broader range.  I also tend to think using robust context menus makes sense (i.e., having an overall "right click on it to find out what you can do with it" rule of thumb).  

 

 

Edited by Bullet_Magnate
fixing typos
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I have to agree with you @Bullet_Magnateabout the direction of the updates. I am new to PZ, but agree with your statements about context menus. 
 

As a newbie, I jumped right in and neglected to do much research besides watching a few videos by content creators on YouTube. I found that many actions needed to be accomplished in the Crafting Menu, as well as furniture having unique options using the unique furniture options on the top-left toolbar, which I ignored at first. Why not be able to do all of that with right-click context menus?

 

The extra UI elements (animal husbandry) in this next potential update do appear to me a bit superfluous. The fluid system might be justifiable, but I have to echo your concern, Bullet_Magnate. I have to wonder why exactly these systems cannot be added to the context menu system. 
 

My guess is that the original code within the original inventory system does not have enough versatility to handle additional variables, such as those required for mixing two different types of fluids into a unique solution. If it makes the dev's job easier, then I understand. Spaghetti code is notoriously easy to break, so perhaps the "add it on top" method is the only hope for new content. 
 

Oh well! Glad to have all the free updates. 

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The right click menu is just a horrible way to do most things.

 

Try building a small building. Over and over, 3 levels deep, in right click menus.

 

Genuinely don't get how people can look at what is essentially "You have liquid, you want it in container, it goes in container" or "Here's your chickens that are inside the hutch, on a grid" and see "overly complicated UI." It's not exactly pivot tables in Excel ... or the graph view in Factorio, here.

 

Like, if this is an indication of what too far is like, then I don't know how we're ever going to have even a slightly more robust and detailed game.

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Trying to rein in the cynicism and attitude so I'll just say... Lots and lots of games out there. Not every game fits to every one's taste. Doesn't mean there's something wrong with that game. Especially when it has such a great following and fan base. I personally love this game, I look forward to each update post from the devs every two weeks.  It continues to challenge me and I never get bored. I will get cocky from time to time and that's when the game reminds what the outcome of the game is suppose to be. So I say, Not today. Not dieing today and I tighten up my game.

 

You can go back to playing b40 at any time. no one is stopping you.

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11 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

The right click menu is just a horrible way to do most things.

 

Try building a small building. Over and over, 3 levels deep, in right click menus.

 

Genuinely don't get how people can look at what is essentially "You have liquid, you want it in container, it goes in container" or "Here's your chickens that are inside the hutch, on a grid" and see "overly complicated UI." It's not exactly pivot tables in Excel ... or the graph view in Factorio, here.

 

Like, if this is an indication of what too far is like, then I don't know how we're ever going to have even a slightly more robust and detailed game.

 

Yeah, I can definitely see your point.  I guess I was thinking more of inventory items and objects on-screen, moreso than complex activities like building.  It's nice if I can right click on an item and immediately see what I can do (or potentially do) with it.  The existing context menus actually do a pretty good job of that already, and it's something I've always appreciated. 

 

A context menu might be a good consistent jumping-off point into the other UI windows -- for example, if I right click on an object maybe an option would be just "Craft," which would jump me into the crafting menu with a filter showing only the recipes I can currently make with that item; or if I right click a fluid container, having a "Mix" option that does a similar jump to the fluid system UI.  That could actually be a nice way to have a single, intuitive entry point into the various windows / menus.  I guess my concern is that the individual UIs / systems aren't necessarily individually complex, BUT figuring out how to get to them (or that they're even available in the first place) could be daunting to new players.  

 

I can actually think of one example in this vein that kinda puzzles me: the UI for moving furniture.  There's a pretty robust context menu system for interacting with the environment (for example, I can right click on a window and open / close the window or the curtains, or even smash the glass).  But, if I want to pick up a chair and move it, I have to figure out that there's a separate icon on the edge of the screen for that.  (It gets REALLY counter-intuitive when dealing with curtains, because you can move a curtain with either the context menu (which gives you a sheet) or the "move furniture" icon (which keeps the curtain intact).)  It just seems like it would be so much more intuitive if that option was presented in a context menu -- in part because people are kinda used to context menus as a starting point when they're trying to figure out how to interact with something on a screen.  PLEASE NOTE that I am sure there's a perfectly legit explanation for why those two parallel systems evolved the way they did over the course of development, so I'm not looking for an explanation -- just pointing out an example of where a consolidated context menu "jumping-off point" might make things easier for players.

 

Please remember also that the original point of my post above was that I *REALLY LIKE* where the game is going overall (maybe I wasn't super clear on that), and I don't share the stated concerns about, e.g., unforgiving combat.  Overall, I think you and your team have done an amazing job crafting a game that *feels* true-to-life in the ways that really matter.  I enthusiastically recommend PZ to all my gamer friends, and none of the concerns I mentioned above change that in the least.  I mention those thoughts solely in hopes that they might help make the end product even better than it's already bound to be.  : )

 

 

Edited by Bullet_Magnate
fixing typos
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