Thoughts on multiplayer balance, difficulty. With a few haphazard suggestions mixed in

[tzaeru]

Hi!

 

First off - kudos to getting MP out once more! I've followed this project since around 2013 or so and I've always been very thrilled about its potential. It's nice to see more of that potential becoming realized.

 

I've been playing MP pretty much exclusively now. Here's some general observations and thoughts about it:

So first off it actually works very well lag wise, combat wise, bug wise, for a small group. At most we've had 8 players online. There's only been a few lag issues and I'm not sure if they were on PZ itself. There's not too many bugs, a bunch of small ones sure, but nothing game breaking thus far.

 

There are some balance issues. In co-op MP, it is relatively easy and quick to get a fully stocked base running. With all the books and the skill VHSs, you really don't need to start your character with any XP boost in skills that can be learned from VSH; you simply rewatch everything every 24 in-game hours. You can even watch multiple TVs at once, while reading a book.

 

Energy, water and food are absolutely no problem. Firstly with a co-op group you can very quickly set up like 10 large barrels; but secondly there's an infinite water bug. If you keep taking water from a sink connected to a barrel and return it to that barrel, you'll get ever so slightly more water each time you do it.

 

Food is also extremely easy to grow. If winter surprises you - just grow indoors. Sunlight is completely optional.

 

With the players spread around and driving around, there's some lag, but not so serious it would have gotten anyone killed so far.

 

Regarding traits, there's a few that are at the moment free points:

- High thirst; water is so easy to come by.
- Weak stomach. You get plenty enough of fresh food.

- Prone to illness. Getting ill isn't a problem in co-op. Your friends got ya.

- Slow to heal. Getting injured isn't a big deal, you got plenty enough supplies to clean your wounds.

 

We don't enforce sleeping at the moment, I think that would solve a lot of the balance issues since we would have less time to watch video tapes and so forth. But with say, 8 players, enforcing sleeping is pretty tough.

 

VOIP doesn't currently work for us, but apparently this is next in line to be looked at.

 

Zombie behavior in close quarters with lots of players isn't yet fully ideal, even though it's pretty good. They might change ownership and suddenly decide walk back a bit in a way that wouldn't happen in solo. Personally I avoid fighting the same zombie with another player. It's too risky.

 

Overall I think you guys have done a great job and we've had a lot, a lot of fun with the game. I don't want to be just complaining here, so please accept my praises - PZ is one of a small handful of games we've gotten more than 5 players playing at the same time! I think so far it's been PZ, Conan: Exiles and Valheim... Maybe Minecraft, too. PZ is in a good company.

 

Seeing the Steam numbers high up was also great, congrats!

 

To finish this up, here are some suggestions:

- Winter indoor farming needs fixin'.

- Traits may need rebalancing for multiplayer. Perhaps the traits can be opened up for Lua modification, so the community can try to come up with fixes for various server types and sizes?
- Water and food availability needs tuning. Are there currently server settings available for modifying these?

- I really really hope that bitten/lacerated/scratched zombification chance can be opened up to server settings... I didn't mind them when I played solo, where I usually played hardcore, but in MP, it'd be cool to die slightly less often. I'd really wish to chance the chances to something like 60/15/4. I know you guys have not liked this idea before, but honestly for a co-op server it'd be great to be able to modify these values easily.

- I think there is/was a mod for this, but I think there needs to be some more options to modify zombie behavior over the long term. For example, make 1% of zombies sprinters 3 months after game start, etc.

- For a MP server, vegetation grows wayyy too fast.

- ....Motorbikes.... Say, a crossroads bike, that is a bit slower but can drive better in forest and grass, and a travel bike, that has a small storage capacity and very slightly higher top speed than the best cars, but is obviously a motorbike with 0 cover from zombies.
- Skill VHSs are tad bit too good for multiplayer. I think they should have a limited amount of total views, say twice per VHS or something like that. Or maybe they should only give up to 80% of XP to next level, after that you need to get the rest of your level by actually practicing the skill; That would make sense, too, can't learn everything without trying it in practice.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for the great game!

[TKo]

As the lone farmer of the above group: winter farming is indeed wayyyyy too easy and the mechanics of it just feel like they have been added as a hard-coded placeholder. Farming further suffers from some issues that detract from the "survival simulator" -gameplay.

• Nothing in the way of game-mechanics or given information prepared me for the sudden increment in growth timer that happened around 1st of October. My character has farming level 10 and he had zero idea of when is the last feasible time for me to plant new crops to be harvested before winter.
• Farming (indoors) shouldn't work without sunlight or greenhouse lamps. It should damage the building if I just plop dirt on top of a floor/roof and smash it full of water.
• If temperature has an effect on farming, I haven't yet seen any indication of that happening (27th of October in-game currently). I suspect to be abruptly surprised once again, despite having a max farming character.
• The lack of ways to preserve food without electricity, combined with the superfast growing times when compared to reality, make farming feel like a magical generator of infinite food, of which 25-50% is eventually tossed away without any real emotional pain from doing so.
• Lack of larger-scale watering solutions, e.g. soaker hoses.