Your opinion regarding MP 'World Reset'

[Waib]

I think for the time being you need to reset fairly often. In a server with 10-20 players all the zombies get killed off pretty fast, and then it basically becomes like the movie The Road, minus the cannibalism.

[Talksintext]

Or introduce cannibalism.

[Pac]

Having played quite a bit on Eliakoh's server on the initial MP public test release, and since on a private persistent server as well thought I'd drop in a few idea's and a bit of feedback.

 

Server resets on public servers at this stage are definitely required primarily in my opinion due to the zombie count, over any loot access. With enough people on the server (a handful will do) it's quite easy to police up plenty of shotgun ammo to easily take on a large number of zombies, usually dying in the process. This results in a depletion of not only the ammo which IMO is no bad thing (having had several incidents where our safe-house was attacked without warning people being a bit more cautious with ammo would be nice). But the large numbers of zombies leave exploration pretty bland and unexciting. 

 

To combat this at this early stage of development it would be perhaps be nice to have some more admin tools along the line of a games master/director to spawn in swarms, this could also tie in nicely with proposed player run story-lines and events. Such as directing all players to defend a safe-house that's been setup over a few days by the players.

 

Spawning is an obvious issue as everyone starts in the same spot with nothing on hand with the surrounding area picked clean, obviously as versions progress it will become more random so much less likely to spawn in the death-zone mess and clutter of abandoned items and dead bodies. Perhaps a simple co-ordinate based start point adjustable by the server in config files would be a good temporary, and later as an optional method of servers altering spawn points to distribute players more evenly across the map. Later on this would be useful for private servers allowing players to set say a safe house location as the spawn point so dying players could easily resume play with friends without the penalty of traversing from Muldragh to the farm off to the west etc.

 

Supplies are obviously an issue with players picking clean areas of importance especially in the starter town very quickly, these are often wasted or lost in abandoned safe houses and dead bodies indistinguishable from zombie bodies. A small feature/effect that could be interesting is players to spill their inventories on death, simulating them dropping equipment or items falling from pockets, with most players using backpacks it shouldn't cause too much clutter. Other options would be nice to include with the helicopter fly over sounds could be air drop packages, dropping fresh food and medical supplies randomly into the game world that attract both players and zombies alike with the noise, this would be an easy way of supplying fresh food such as meat without requiring the implementation of hunting and instead just spawning boxes in predefined or random areas. These could also be used by server admins to drop them on request to create more 'events' for their players.

 

Obviously many features are things that would come into play later with NPC events, but I would propose incorporating a few earlier that could be admin or randomly occurring that would allow public servers to maintain player interest for longer. Preventing the need for resetting the game world due to the current build limitations of zombie migration and infection growth/spread.

 

We might not quite be at the stage where you could run a public server permanently, but it would be a very interesting test scenario to see how things did play out with the current build so I'd love to see it attempted outside of a private environment. Or at least trying it for a week and seeing how long it takes for the farming bug exploits to overrun the streets back to mother nature

[DerPeiler]

I think 2 days is quite a good reset time at the moment. I've played on some public servers recently and it was quite hard for me not to starve since most houses near the spawn were allready looted. PvP servers should be resetted every day, since you won't be able to find a weapon after people were looting for a few days.

[moreus]

No option for "never reset"? is more realistic still can find berries in forest and some players can make farm if no they all will die and then you can eventually  reset server

I think 2 days is quite a good reset time at the moment. I've played on some public servers recently and it was quite hard for me not to starve since most houses near the spawn were allready looted. PvP servers should be resetted every day, since you won't be able to find a weapon after people were looting for a few days.

you dont needed Weapon for kill zombie you can atack with hands and kill with foot

[Zach]

Never! Atleast until I can spend an hour and a half barricading my safehouse and be confident it will stay there.

[Renegade Doggie]

Or introduce cannibalism.

 

Lock the thread.

 

We're done here.

[Walter Sullivan]

One thing that would help with the loot is if zombies dropped some. Right now, afaik, they are only dropping their clothes when they die, but I *think* that in single-player they sometimes dropped random stuff as well, but so far in multi-player not even a single zombie dropped anything but it's clothes.

[DukeTheWolf]

I really like the idea of the developers future plans for mp, it is cool to see how you think about that stuff. playing today I got into a room and walked around for about an hour before I found a golf club, not that it mattered since it took another hour to find 2 zombies standing together in the middle of nowhere. I'm not saying respawns is the key because lets face it you clear out a thick area to build a town and because of spawns it is always thick with zombies. would be kind of pointless, and unrealistic seeing zombies spawn from air if you are in that place at the exact time.

just thinking outside the box while trying to stick with having a "this is me, I am surviving the zombie apocalypse or trying to do so" feeling that im sure most people here want to feel. what if since the zombies at the start of a server only have cloths on them could also start to have early panic stages of an apocalypse items like bottled water and kitchen knifes and garbage bags, and in the future to not only fix the lack of zombie presence problem but also help with the item scarcity problem have hordes of zombies migrate to area populated with the living and having them repopulate zombie presence and at the same time they could have later stages of an apocalyptic scenario items as if they were turned a lot later than most, they could show up with duffle bags and bats and canned food and seeds and water purification tablets and bottled water.

im still new to playing your game but I have been a zombie fan since childhood and have spent more than a good portion of my life thinking about zombie movies and games and books, not only that but being a personal zombie apocalypse prepper, I love that you developers read and react with the players of your games. and it would be a dream come true if some of my zombie game ideas were actually in a game someday. I hope eventually you read an idea worth putting in your game.

Duke Wolf

[roflmywaffle]

While still in beta I think it would be better to reset every day because of the bugs. There will come a time when servers will be reset every few days or week but now is not that time IMO.

[Zombiepupz]

Personally I hate the idea of server resets; after all you can't just 'reset' the real world when stuff's running low and you have to find alternatives. What I'm trying to say is what's the point in a survival game if you effectively 'die' every other day (all evidence of your survival is wiped) ?

However, I have found that by the time I join most servers there and few zombies and the defeats the purpose of project ZOMBoid

Besides, backing up what I said earlier I like the idea of going on long loot runs with your buddy, unsure if you're going to find anything, or indeed if you will have the supplies to get back. In the end, what is an apocalypse if you can easily find what you need and want? Its supposed to be hard, having a constant supply of loot would defeat the point. would it not?
For the lack of zombies problem, I support the migrating theory- every so days X number of zombies come in from the west/north/east/south and that stops them randomly spawning in your safe house, but does not make you invincible as they can still come n knock it down. 

Now, did that make any sense? Writing in a conceivable way really isn't my strong suit.   

[harakka]

Server resets are just a temporary measure to deal with the game's current lack of long-term  content. They will become less necessary as development progresses.

[Magusdl]

I think one thing should be clear, the admins don't want people leaving their server, that's the issue. So let's avoid long-term thinking (like hard-to-implement features, specially NPC's). The thing is, creating a safehouse with people, gathering loot, killing zombies together, these are the new stuff people want to try out for a long time (some more than others). Running around an empty town is easily achieved by disabling zombies in SP.

 

Now to reliably create a good experience for most players, I think a reset is required in this build. I think 2 days is better, since timezones can easily make it unplayable for some. Even the unlooted food will end up rotting when power goes out (it happened on the second day on my 2-man LAN server), water went out the same day. Farming requires quite a bit of items, hunting not a high priority feature (can't be counted on soon). If people die too often simply running around trying to quench their first thirst/hunger, death becomes too casual.

 

Now, server wipes would need the players to delete their saves too, and that's quite a hassle. In my tests, if they don't delete theirs, they will get random disconnections, while still able to navigate locally on all previously loaded cells. They can pick up items, and if they logout then login again, alot of dupe items will show up (on server console) and then will be deleted on server restart (not delete-restart, just closing and opening again). Well, at least if put in the same container, we didn't test this further.

And while I haven't tried it, I'm sure it's pretty easy to backup a fully-loaded character to start on a new server (what would be an issue, for many reasons).

 

For devs: I think a "new player kit" should not be hard to implement, so server admins could choose what items new players would receive (maybe farming essentials, water catchers). That way they could actively supply new players with the minimum required to give them a satisfactory experience, even change it over time as a specific supply is completely out, without the need to reset or manually give away items. It could even be a reason for stablished groups to take new people in. Just give the admins an option to set what items new players start with, I think most will know how to get the best out of it by analyzing their server situation. This would be useful even on the final build. While it won't solve the lack of loot, and consequently exploration, it would help to have more stablished groups, trading (or raiding) among them would become the end-game loot.

Erm, and obviously, the horde migrations simulation from out-of-map towns. (sorry, had to say or people might think I overlooked this issue).

[MonkeyDrone]

As of now, the public servers are getting brutalized by hackers, abusers and griefers. My server is practically unplayable with the amount of horrible activities going on about there.

 

Really looking forward to the next release with more admin tools and control.

 

The God of the Poll has spoken. The people have spoken. We all want a persistent world to play in. A world that will evolve along with us. We will be the superior species, we will rise again and build new cities, a new world order!

[Starage]

So someone's gone and placed crates where you spawn. You cannot move at all.

[Connall]

As of now, the public servers are getting brutalized by hackers, abusers and griefers. My server is practically unplayable with the amount of horrible activities going on about there.

 

Really looking forward to the next release with more admin tools and control.

 

The God of the Poll has spoken. The people have spoken. We all want a persistent world to play in. A world that will evolve along with us. We will be the superior species, we will rise again and build new cities, a new world order!

 

Yeah been getting that a lot in my server as well, nothing I can really do except when there's cheaters. Cheat back and make their lives miserable :v

 

 

So someone's gone and placed crates where you spawn. You cannot move at all.

 

It happens, not much can be done until an admin comes and sorts the problem.

[Koregan]

You could write a lua-script that resets the starting place every ten minutes. that would solve the problem.

[Connall]

You could write a lua-script that resets the starting place every ten minutes. that would solve the problem.

 

That's easier said than done.