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A few things that need to change.


Nardasia

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One of the main goals of this game seems to be a consistency of reality, but there are several things that clearly don't meet that goal.

Another complaint I have is that there's too much RNG. Too much RNG is bad game design (I am a game designer, having studied game design for over 10 years).

 

The first complaint I have (currently at 175.3 hours played) are things like zombies beating down doors, or randomly attacking doors or windows without hearing noise or seeing anything. This seems completely inconsistent. If zombies randomly attack things then they should attack everything from the walls of a house to cars to fences - everything. They should slam their bodies against brick walls until the organic material of the zombie fall apart. The zombies cannot feasibly have enough "sense" to understand in their zombified mental state that a door is easier to smash than a brick wall.

 

I could punch a solid door until I'd broken every single bone in both my hands, my wrists, my forearms, and my biceps and I'm not going to break that door down - not unless it's a poor quality door. And if a window is reinforced it should be fundamentally indestructible.

 

But a larger gripe I have is with zombies randomly attacking doors and windows. Again, if the mentality of these creatures is to destroy anything impeding their destinations, then there are a few contradictions here: Like I stated, one is that then the zombies should attack literally anything in their way, and 2, zombies shouldn't know any better so as to go around anything, and they do.

 

If a zombie knows it can smash a window or a door down and move through then it doesn't understand it can just move around the building, and if it doesn't understand that then literally anything you lead it to - a car, a wall, a light post, a tall fence, anything - should cause the zombie to not understand it can move around it, but zombies move around obstacles all the time.

 

Clearly you developers have coded it so that the zombies are making checks for "breakable" objects, causing a potential path where the AI can cause the zombies to stop their initial track so as to stop and attack these objects. This removes the realism as it's cherry-picked considering what you've coded as "breakable".

 

A hugely frustrating thing with this is that you can be sleeping only to have zombies beat the door to the room down in the middle of the night and surround you so that once your character wakes up they immediately die.

 

But this doesn't make any sense within the confines of the world. The zombies don't hear you - and if they do, that's inconsistent with your sneak mechanic being as it is, or with the multitude of things you can do in game that even make an audible sound that won't attract zombie attention.

 

And this is an issue with RNG because it's completely random if the game decides a hoard of zombies moved in the night and then beat the door down to the building you're sleeping in and surrounded you. The only sure-fire way to avoid this is to only sleep on the second floor of a building after destroying the stairs, which is very easily argued to be a form of an exploit and another deviation from reality.

 

You ever take apart stairs?

 

And why is it that zombie hordes can't smash your doors down to your first floor and destroy all your things? Or smash apart your cars? Well, because you're cherry-picking.

 

I'm completely fine with the permadeath nature of the game - but that nature must come at the hands of player mistakes, not RNG. What you're just going to do is ensure that the majority of your player base manipulates the game in some way to ensure they mitigate as much of that RNG as possible, which defeats the purpose of your own coded mechanics. Why code it for an explicit purpose if doing so is only going to motivate players to alter settings to negate it, or to use the debug mode to offset the poorly-managed mechanics?

 

And that's how you know when a mechanic is poor - when the fundamental player base "cheeses" them or out right disregards them/mitigates them by way of soft or hard exploitation, file editing, mods, and debug mode.

 

The GAME needs a foundational set of rules and those rules should be consistent. You're going to push away a huge swath of your players and potential players by being too stubborn about some of your core dynamics you're unwilling to change.

 

My recommendation is to be consistent in zombie behavior and always, always, always give players the tools necessary to alleviate RNG. If zombies can break down a door while your character is sleeping, the fix to that shouldn't be every player destroys their stairs or lives in the woods.

 

Alter the way zombies respawn. Every single zombie is a potential for perma-death, so there is no reason to make unrealistic spawn cycles. Make them realistic - give the player a REWARD for taking a huge risk. Risk vs. reward is a massive element in good game design. The player feeling as if they are completely safe because they spent 3 days clearing hordes of zombies around a gas station should ensure that the area IS in fact safe with no superficial "magical teleporting spawned zombies" suddenly appearing from thin air and killing them in their sleep.

 

The answer shouldn't be (and I'm sure you've heard this from many of your customers already) to sandbox the hell out of the game. Too much sandbox changes the fundamental dynamics of the GAME ITSELF, rendering it not the same game. It'd be like playing Chess with checkers pieces that move in ways you arbitrarily decided - that's fine and all, but you're no longer playing Chess.

 

So what game ARE we playing? Because once we've modded and debugged the hell out of the game, it's no longer Project Zomboid, but something completely different. It's like watching these streamers talk about surviving for 1,000 hours only to note that they're so heavily modded and likely file manipulating/debugging that they're likely full of crap.

 

The core game needs a core, and that core needs to be FUN to play or it shouldn't exist.

 

The problem with a mechanic like allowing zombies to smash a door down and surround you while sleeping is it takes 100% of the control (or even preparation) away from the player. The player has NO tools at their disposal to stop this short of an exploit (destroying stairs is an exploit).

 

You might as well just have the game make a check every time the player sleeps and if the check succeeds, just roll a game over screen and kill their character. That's how superficial that mechanic is.

 

And it also creates a complete inconsistency with multiplayer where there's no sleeping, creating a direct discrepancy in the game itself.

Edited by Nardasia
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  • 2 weeks later...

Not sure why you got no replies in 13 days but:

 

I never died from being surrounded by zombies while sleeping. Never needed to break stairs (though I agree it shouldn't be a thing). I agree that it seems stupid that zombies would randomly break house windows but not car windows - although I'm glad they don't or every single vehicle in the game would be a wreck.

 

I agree with most of your points though, and I think zombie AI should be polished. If you watch Retanaru's vid on how to lose zombies, it's clear that there's some magic bullshit going on and zombies should be fixed to be coherent.

 

Edit: there's a setting to allow or forbid zombies from destroying doors and windows randomly. The default Apocalypse settings forbid them, so if they do surround you, it's because you somehow drew them in. Maybe by switching the lights on? (watch Retanaru's vid on lights attracting zombies)

Edited by Modin
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I agree its a really annoying mechanic zombies attacking your base for no apparent reason, I have been mentioning it for more then a year.

 

I remember a Dev replied one time saying something along the lines as,

"This isn't intentional behaviour - they are programmed just to attack destructible items as they randomly bump into it - the problem is zombies spawn around the player which causes a higher chance of them bumping into it.

 

This "Bumping into it" is what results in a chain reaction since the noise a zombie bumping makes attracts more zombies resulting in a domino effect.

 

-----

 

The solution I proposed at the time I believe was make various attack strengths of zombies

So Regular bumping not only does no damage - but after 4 - 5s they stop and wander off if they get no response.

 

So it still has the same "effect" of terror but not the annoying damage consequences. 

This also creates "counter-play" by shutting down all noise in the building to let the zombie "wander off" 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I will admit, zeds bashing doors for no reason does break immersion to a degree, as does pathing around tall chain link fences. I'm guessing the devs'll probably make those fences thumpable at some point. 

 

I don't know of they can be destroyed by zeds, but playing last night, I noticed I was able to deconstruct wooden shed walls. Maybe thumpable walls are coming? (Cannot disassemble other houses walls at the moment, and disassembling wooden walls could be from a mod, don't remember seeing anything on the dev blog)

 

Windows are little more believable, or doors with windows. Glass reflects light, after all, and in my mind, it's just a knuckle brain trying to get at his reflection.

 

Regardless, if they can't find ways to get to you, I imagine it would make for a bland playthrough.

 

It does bother me that once a zed starts paying attention to a door or window, the only way to get their attention is to walk right up to them. Horns, gunshots and sirens - no. Invading your space though? Why not?

 

Does '93 Kentucky have a stand your ground law or something?

 

Invariably, I have faith and hope that someday, zombie pathing will get some TLC down the road.

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zeds attacking windows is fine.  between reflections  of light and movement and the possibility of curtains moving due to wind getting in somewhere, I think zombies triggering is fine.

 

doors are iffyier.  any door with a window (due to above reasonings) or that's open  (could move in the breeze and hinges could squeak) no problem, but a closed solid door with nothing making noise behind it  shouldn't attract zeds except once in a blue moon maybe when a roamer stumbles into one somehow and creates a feedback loop of noise that attracts others.

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Been playing  since 2015 with a thousand of hours. I don't recall ever having a zombie break down a door while sleeping and I am hopelessly clumsy[walking noise maker lunch meat]. If there are a lot of zombies around I take a chair and sleep in a closet and move furniture and make obstacles.  There are so many small things in your surroundings that can be a life saver of saving.

 

I vaguely remember the meta sleeping event, but you can turn that off now and usually is by default? You can also turn building strength created by players up higher. Although I am not sure if the weakness does anything in terms of zombies strength with doors and objects. Would have to ask that in the discord.  The sandbox options are so vast that you can tinker and adjust mechanics to your liking better suited for your playstyle, like zombie navigation. 

 

As far as the zombie AI , I have no opinion on the matter.  

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On 5/11/2022 at 11:15 AM, Papa Juliet Whiskey said:

There is an option I  sandbox mode, which I think is on by default, that causes them to avoid hitting doors and windows without seeing or hearing the player, or meta events. I don't think this applies to player built structures though. 

 

When off, they tend to bash against anything they can.

 

Yeah I think you're right. I've been deep inside a structing reading (nothing else going on) and quite commonly there comes a thwack thwacking at my barricaded chamber door..

Edited by BoogieMan
typo
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it always seems convenient that so many people that complain lengthily about things like this claim to be coders or game designers

 

 

the first complaint "zombies shouldn't be able to beat down doors its unrealistic, flesh doesn't beat wood" yeah thats true, flesh is a lot softer than wood. and zomboid definitely boasts about it's realism.. but if zombies couldn't break down doors, the game would be pretty damn boring and very easy

 

the core game is fun

 

and yeah, if you mod it and debug it you're stilling playing project zomboid.. it's not a "completely different game"

so if i went out and bought a classic chevy squarebody truck, cut out the rust on the body and replaced it, gave it a lift kit, and bigger tires and swapped out the diffs, and upgraded the sound system does that mean its a "completely different truck"?

 

nah man, it's still a classic X year chevy squarebody, just with some mods and upgrades. just like zomboid

 

don't play it if it causes you so much grief

 

 

i enjoy it tons

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I agree with your initial complaints, but as others have stated: Early Access and all that. Many, many inconsistent and outdated features/mechanics are still in the game from pre-B41 (and even pre-B39) era of the game. Zombie tracking, spawning, and thumping mechanics are 3 major ones for sure. However, we really don't know what is and isn't intended behavior, and how the devs envision their behavior in the finalized game release. Thumping down windows and doors definitely are intended features, we can assume that much. However, what about walls? Zeds can eventually break down player-made walls, even if they are a Level 10 Carpenter or Metalworker. Why can't they break down the 20+ year old walls of a trailer home? How can they even break down a 10 foot tall welded metal wall without dozens of bodies? Realistically, walls need an upgrade first. They need to be categorized into Wooden, Metal, and Stone. All wooden walls should be breakable by zeds through thumping, and PCs through Sledgehammer, Axe, Saw, or even kicking the supports out (however this will take a lot of energy and have potential for injuries). Metal walls should only be destructible to PCs through the Sledge, and should have an insane amount of HP against zeds. Nigh indestructible levels. Stone walls (ie brick, concrete, etc) should be totally indestructible. Neither zombies, nor players should be able to break through a solid concrete wall. The only exception being a jackhammer or power saw if they were ever added. Under this system, some flimsy wooden walls should come crashing down if a horde spots you, but you should be completely safe if you are in strong brick house. This would already be a major update for zombie AI, and it would also just be amazing for MP and future NPCs in terms of faction warfare.

 

In terms of tracking and spawning features, we don't really know what to expect. I definitely feel the same as you, that it's too RNG heavy and cheeseable. However, it's an extremely difficult balance to strike. No new zombie spawns at all, and you risk the player completely clearing out the map. Have spawns at all, and it may seem unearned when a zombie kills you. Personally, I think that new zombies should spawn at the edge of the map and move inwards. Heavily at the highways and urban edges of the map, and sparsely in the wooded edges. Newly spawned zombies would start moving down the highways until they met up with more zeds and formed a group, or had tracking set off by a survivor. This way, you can have both realism and new zombies spawning in. Maybe they could even have a desired zombie population, so the more you kill the more respawn at the edge of the map. This would allow players to clear out areas to build bases, while still allowing the world to be zombie infested. However, this setting could still be customized in sandbox settings in case you really do want to be able to clear out the map.

 

I like the concept behind Sleeping Events, but not the execution. I think they should be partially RNG, and partially based on sleeping conditions. Are you in a hotspot on the zombie heat map? Are you sleeping in an open, echo-filled room; or a small closet deep inside a mansion? Are you stressed and having nightmares? Are you sick and coughing/sneezing? Are you or your house covered in blood? Is there a radio, TV, or other loud electrical noise nearby? Are there a lot of dead bodies and/or zombies nearby? Are there any broken/open windows/doors? All of these factors could be considered while running the check to do a Sleeping Event or not. If I am in the middle of the woods, perfectly clean and healthy, surrounded by walls on all sides with no sound emanating from my base... there is no possible way a horde shows up at my doorstep. If I have a violent nightmare while sleeping in a Louisville warehouse, it probably makes sense that a bunch of zombies are already trying to get into my shelter. Finally, I think that it should only spawn a horde outside as you wake up. You should have ample amount of time to either get prepared for a last stand, or bug out with as much as you can grab. You shouldn't already have a zombie in your room by the time you wake up (unless you had a broken window or something). You would be woken up by the sounds of a dozen people walking around your house, let alone a dozen moaning undead trying to get in!

 

Tracking is a topic I won't really try to tackle here, since it's way more of a practical code situation than one of realistic behavior. However, I will say that something needs to change. Sandbox settings of Cognition/Memory barely affect their lethality and behavior. We need much more in-depth and nuanced tracking/pathfinding, as well as the ability to control it better in the sandbox settings.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I agree with the author to some extent. I personally had a situation when I decided to spend the night in a prison cell of a police station, what was my surprise when 4 zombies smashed a steel lattice door and ate my character, since it was very dark and also cramped. It also bothers me that zombies are always trying to destroy the log fence around my base, although I could sit at home and read a book without attracting them in any way, I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that even 30 people will not be able to break a log wall with their bare hands. Basically, it is destroyed by about 2-5 zombies... (The maximum strength of buildings in the sandbox is enabled.)

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It definitely needs dialling back. If a horde is closely following you near buildings, many of them lose focus and start banging on doors or windows. They also become fixated on the door or window and won't stop until it drops or you step to close. It needs work for sure.

 

I wouldn't say it's a major issue though. Right now I think that nutrition being very weak is much higher priority. You can pretty much survive on a diet of raw cabbages. You can gain weight at an alarming speed (which in turn makes both the underweight traits free points, compared to the overweight two) and there is no real negative to eating an entire tub of ice cream in one sitting. Nausea is already a moodlet and could be used to stop players doing this. For instance, your character stops eating the block of butter after a quarter of the way through it, gets nauseous and can't eat again for a period of time.

 

As it stands, there's too many skills linked to food procurement that are seriously blunted because of it. Cooking is also blunted because there's no real reason to cook a well balanced meal. That also needs to change.

 

Gardening could also do with a major overhaul too. I think a companion planting system could be added here (to help negate the negatives of adjacent planting and reduce the checkerboard layouts).

Edited by gromit
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I agree, I will note that currently zombies don't technically "seek" player built structures its just the way the spawning / horde mechanics work that causes issues. Realistically the biggest danger is before everything has gone to hell. Loved ones turning, finding yourself in a crowd unarmed because you were in a train station or a sports game during the outbreak. Not understanding what a zombie is and getting bit, etc.

 

Once you have made it past the first few weeks of everything you are realistically pretty safe because you have a massive advantage. Death comes when you're so exhausted you collapse and get caught, or so weak from hunger you cant fight back. Or you get sick from drinking non purified water or food. A regular person in good shape can take on zombies without issue, but thats not why surviving would be difficult.

 

It comes back to the issue of it being a video game, people expect to fight huge hordes of zombies in a zombie game. Even when it does not make sense. There are way more zombies than the population of the areas we find ourselves in. Why/how are there groups of zombies all over the roads and highways when there are barely any cars? where did the cars go? Why are there hundreds of zombies filling up train depots and warehouses, abandoned houses, park picnic areas, rural farms? It doesnt make sense.

 

Instead I think the way forward is to add more threats so the zombies can be dialed back. Once animals are added then we can have dangerous animals, bears, wolves, stray dogs, coyotes, foxes (not too dangerous but I wouldn't want to fight one unarmed). Then there does not have to be 150 zombies in some remote location because you have these new threats. It plays into risk vs reward because you can hunt these animals, but good luck trying to take down a bear without a gun. Risk is firing a gun to kill an animal and drawing a horde of zombies to your location or trying to take down an animal without a gun and risking loosing that fight. Kill the animal and you get a reward, meat hide, bones/teeth, etc as well as the building/area it was in. Imagine seeing 2 bears and some bear cubs have made a home inside a warehouse you needed to loot, it adds depth.

 

The second is better buildings, the devs have touched on adding masonry and brick walls and I wholeheartedly agree. I think metal and stone walls should be fireproof and virtually indestructible. Building a stone wall is really hard, it takes a long time and a lot of stone. Even a cinder brick wall has the same issue. IRL you can sit around and wait for mortar to dry or go buy more bricks when you break some. But its not easy to carry hundreds of bricks through the zombie infested ruins back to where you want to build your wall. This adds a cost and works with the class mechanics the devs are working on. A mason might not be as useful and well rounded as a carpenter but its worth having one in your colony because building brick walls is a massive undertaking with high rewards. Risk brick walls are expensive and time consuming, reward defense and fire resistance.

 

And that leads me to my third suggestion, fire should be a real game mechanic. Rework the way fire is currently so stone and metal things don't burn and then add more ways for fire to spread. It adds danger without needing zombies while also being able to draw zombies. Smoke alarm batteries last for years and some kinds of sprinkler systems use wax that melts in high temps to release water. If people are going to be building metal forges to blacksmith or welding things then fire should come into play. Have it be so that you need stone/metal structures to house forges or stoves or kilns. Because fires will start and destroy wooden structures and the loot within. Have it so that if you start a fire or use a torch to light up a dark apartment building you can start a fire, but instead of the fire melting the stone walls into burnt wood and ash like it currently does have it only burn the wooden furniture and carpets. Leave behind charred metal furniture and rubble. Imagine you come to a dark apartment building/hotel and craft a torch to light your way, but you see a bear/wolf inside and run away but you trip and drop your torch on the way out. The building becomes engulfed in flames setting off smoke alarms which draw zombies in while you try to escape. You return later and explore the now burnt out ruins and scavenge metal things and bits of loot that didn't get burnt up, maybe a maintenance closet with a metal door that was protected from the flames, maybe one area had sprinklers that put out some of the flames. Risk fire will destroy/downgrade loot and may draw zombies. Reward crafting/cooking/light/warmth.

 

Fourth would be reworking nutrition, the mood debuffs are crazy. I eat cold food on purpose and dont instantly become depressed. If you have been eating nothing but bugs and dandelions eating a cold pork chop or steak would be a godsend. Which side note devs please eat some dandelions IRL, they taste very bitter until you cook them so if anything is giving us a sadness moodle it should be that. I think the cooking system should be reworked by adding attributes to ingredients and then different recipes call for different things. So add a leafy green attribute to cabbage, lettuce, dandelions, mint, etc and then have a salad get bonuses for having a variety of leafy greens but also no negative for adding more. So instead of a pure lettuce salad that makes you depressed its simply a boring salad because you got your bonus for leafy greens but nothing further. On the other hand a sandwich with nothing but lettuce would make you sad because leafy greens have a threshold. For example a sandwich could have 1 bread 2 max leafy greens, unlimited meats, unlimited cheese, 4-5 max veggies. Adding some lettuce to your sandwich gives you leafy green bonus but adding over the limit will start to make it bad.

 

These food attributes can go further, have salty, sweet, sour, bitter, savory attributes where adding 1 bitter thing is fine but a bunch of bitter ingredients will ruin the dish. Meanwhile combos will give even better benefits (sweet + sour anyone?). It really adds depth because say your colony has been eating nothing but foraged bitter plants and they are really sad about it. Going and finding some vinegar or honey could allow the chef to remove the bitter debuff from the food by cooking it with the right ingredients. Now farmers will need to grow a variety of crops so they have a mix of attributes. It's also intuitive because this is how cooking works IRL. It promotes trade and could even be expanded with a fatigue system where if you consume enough of the same dish/attributes they have diminishing returns. Your first game meat and cabbage sandwich might taste amazing compared to all the bugs you had been eating but after eating nothing but sandwiches for 3 weeks a salad becomes much more appealing.

 

In conclusion make zombies more realistic but add other dangers that give players a reason to be in areas where there are zombies instead of just bringing zombies to the players artificially.

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