Concern about Build 42 and the long-term difficulty for players

[Opaquejaguar286]

Well, another consideration is why the feeling a game is "won" comes about. At a glance, yeah, the difficulty dropping off makes sense. I'm not sure this is the root of it though. I say this based on getting there and reflecting upon it in my own games. The conclusion was the root problem is there are no more goals to achieve. Early game there are a lot of these goals. Later you hit a point where you've achieved most or all of them.

 

Yeah, you could add more threats or make it so they gravitate toward the player in some way. Perhaps a better solution is to add incentives to leave the safety of the bunker. Additional goals for the player to achieve. This is where concepts like NPC's could add a lot to the game. Other NPC survivors out there for the player to find for one reason or another. Concepts like this and others under similar lines seem like a better way to handle this issue.

 

Speaking for myself.... If I have a personal, self-sufficient fortress stocked to the brim and a helicopter event pops off pulling zombies to it I probably wouldn't suddenly stop feeling like I've "won". That horde is going to get dealt with. A random animal attack, same deal. A group of bandits coming to take all my stuff because I have it and they don't. Pick a hypothetical threat, any threat. It can come, receive the "get off my lawn" speech and meet it's demise. Such additions are more beneficial for the variety, suspense and engagement they provide (all good reasons to consider them, by the way). 

[tenklop]

I feel like people are forgetting that NPCs are going to make the game wayyyy harder with the random elements they bring and how they described dealing with survivors you've recruited. They should honestly leave the zombie behaviours as they are now until NPCs are release to see how much more harder things are with NPCs, but they could've added way more new meta threats with them that we dont know and are keeping things under wraps until b43+.

I could also compile all the NPC information they've told over the years into one big blogpost on reddit about how theyll work. But I feel like itll be pointless because theyll be out in like 1.5-2 years anyways and the devs by then would start releasing more information about them.

[IndustryStandard]

5 hours ago, tenklop said:

I feel like people are forgetting that NPCs are going to make the game wayyyy harder with the random elements they bring and how they described dealing with survivors you've recruited. They should honestly leave the zombie behaviours as they are now until NPCs are release to see how much more harder things are with NPCs, but they could've added way more new meta threats with them that we dont know and are keeping things under wraps until b43+.

I could also compile all the NPC information they've told over the years into one big blogpost on reddit about how theyll work. But I feel like itll be pointless because theyll be out in like 1.5-2 years anyways and the devs by then would start releasing more information about them.

No ones forgotten about NPCs, they've been brought up a few times here and in my original post lol

Hoping to have some difficulty rebalances before that since NPCs are a few years off still. 
 

[IndustryStandard]

On 5/21/2023 at 2:48 AM, Opaquejaguar286 said:

I'm not trying to be dismissive but the difficulty drop feels largely self-inflicted to me. By this I mean it's a choice to avoid leaving the proverbial cave once self-sustainability is reached. The player can instead go out and explore the world, in all it's apocalyptic wonder. Round up a big horde and stick a fork in em for no particular reason. Setup secondary bases just because. Go find more stuff you don't need because you want it. Whatever floats your boat....

 

I think it's a clear design goal to offer more experiences beyond a constant barrage of neverending threats to stave off premature death. Perhaps some players are content to sit around marveling at their conquest of the apocalypse. Maybe some want to focus on the building aspects. Clearly some want a hardcore experience. Some, like me, change depending on the mood. One minute I'll sit there adding another level to a structure just because. The next I'll take a trip to a storage lot inhabited by definitely not herbivores during a hurricane, sledgehammer in tow, while nursing a broken leg for the hell of it.

 

I bring it up because if the game were to force the issue here it would have to involve unavoidable threats, given the reason difficulty can drop off. Go too far that way and players seeking a less hardcore experience could easily lose access to it. I'm not sure this is necessarily a good idea.

 

None of this is to say tweaks or additional threats is blasphemy either. Both could have value. Throwing around ideas and discussing it certainly isn't harmful. I just think it's important to account for all the potential playstyles and experiences one can get from PZ when considering such changes.

 

 

The issue with these takes is that they need to pick a lane, you can't please every crowd no matter how many sandbox settings get created. The more broadly you try to appeal the less tightly designed your game becomes, you'll end up giving a meh experience for everyone instead.

I don't think a lot of the suggested changes from this post are remotely on a level that would start alienating players and I don't believe at all that just because a portion of the playerbase want things to be a certain way (people that want to just sit in a fortress and never leave) that the developers need to cater to them. Game design is hard and players will unconsciously meta the fun out of their own experiences, it's important to protect them from themselves. 

 

 

Project Zomboid sells itself as The hardcore zombie apocalypse simulator game on the store and any changes that further this aspect should be expected and encouraged.

[Jack Bower]

You can already forage in the wilderness and survive. You get tons of food, can boil water from a lake and not have to see a single zombie already? It is the same as it ever was.

[EnigmaGrey]

6 hours ago, Jack Bower said:

You can already forage in the wilderness and survive. You get tons of food, can boil water from a lake and not have to see a single zombie already? It is the same as it ever was.

Pretty much why I don’t get why we’re having the discussion, at least beyond the idea that the mid-game isn’t really getting any content and won’t become more challenging in 42. You’ve been able to camp since 2013 — and the game was so much easier before virtual hordes existed.

 

 The stuff in 42 will just be available whether you get to it; more things to do mean more reasons to get off your duf. Maybe it’s not on the scope of Rimworld tracking networth to trigger events, but  42 wasn’t going to be that anyway — which I should note seems rather antithetical to a “simulation,” if we’re going that route. We’d want things to feel more organic if that’s the case, wouldn’t we? Kind of like what we have intentionally done with the original heat map, by making the forests less frequented by hordes vs. urban areas and highways.

 

If you use that meta knowledge to have a boring experience, then oh well. Not much different from using mods or sandbox or save scumming, is it?

[IndustryStandard]

9 hours ago, Jack Bower said:

You can already forage in the wilderness and survive. You get tons of food, can boil water from a lake and not have to see a single zombie already? It is the same as it ever was.

 

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, I wasn't acting like this was a new thing with build 42.

The difficulty problem that I have been talking about has been a long standing issue with the game even before it hit steam imo

It doesn't stop being a problem just because it was always a problem.

Edited May 23, 2023 by IndustryStandard

[Jack Bower]

Are you complaining that with practice you can beat a game? What do you think they should add? Left4dead monsters that upon gaining line of sight of you immediately kill you?

If the game is not hard enough for you, open up the sandbox and set the difficulty yourself. Hell, even use a mod that makes zombies run as fast as cars if it is still too easy for your greatness.

For the rest of us, we're happy to get this content. The first thing that comes to mind when I saw this was. "Wow, we could do a map that is 100% forest with no buildings and make civilization." Not. "People might live in the forest and that might be easy- Because living in the forest is already easy and can already be done.

 

Your just beating a drum complaining about content being added, while claiming no one else can understand your vision. Meanwhile plenty of people have 4k+ hours spent on the game and are much more excited about this content than fighting zombies while pressing the back button for the ten thousandth hundred time. 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Jack Bower

[IndustryStandard]

You aren't even reading anything here. Most obvious example is here

 

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"What do you think they should add? Left4dead monsters that upon gaining line of sight of you immediately kill you?"

 

I already answered this question the first time it was asked out of no where

 

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"I'm not asking for special zombies, I'm asking for more ways the game can challenge players more and incentivize them to leave that comfort that is easily attained. NPCs can do this but we are still a ways off. Weather could actually damage crops, kill animals or even damage your home rarely requiring players to actually fix up or deal with potential disasters. Diseases with more variety of specific medicines could knock my character on their ass and force me off schedule and missing out on things. Being in the woods with the only source of light and real noise should, would and could draw zombies my direction. Nutrition can be changed to require more thought into your diet, give players more reason to cook balanced meals or a variety of meals besides shoving 30 ingredients into a frying pan. Give the slightest movement speed variation to zombies so players can't casually walk in a circle to cluster 200 of them. Let zombies bust through any window of a car and attack the players. Make weather/lighting affect zombies so players feel like they should or shouldn't take advantage of certain times of the day or certain weathers. Make it so players can't watch Life and Living and then watch the same VHS version of the show they already saw for extra XP. Make cars that haven't been touched in a month or two require some maintenance before being drivable. Let zombies bust down those unbreakable fences. And more. "

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by IndustryStandard

[EnigmaGrey]

6 hours ago, IndustryStandard said:

 

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, I wasn't acting like this was a new thing with build 42.

The difficulty problem that I have been talking about has been a long standing issue with the game even before it hit steam imo

It doesn't stop being a problem just because it was always a problem.

Because, as Jack says, this is largely complaining about gaining competency with the game. Just because you give it a catchy name and call it a problem doesn’t mean it is a problem . We add all the things you want, you’ll still beat it and eventually get bored. Same as every game. Unless we turn this into the open-world version of an infinite dungeon crawl or we have a storyteller far more complex than Rimworld or borrow from Bethesda/Blozzard, you’re still going to hit that wall and find the game easier — because you’re better at it and capable of exploiting the game’s mechanics to your favor.

 
And, as I tried to say earlier: some of this stuff is just going to naturally come as a consequence of build 42, be it balancing (like addressing tv/book xp) or new content (professions, farming, crafting). So there’s no point assuming the negative here, especially when the point of 42 is explicitly to address some of the games’ shortcomings, not just add new content.

[Yolan]

Just came to say I agree with IndustryStandard entirely. My impression of this thread is that some people are reacting very defensively towards a pretty reasonable and carefully worded expression of concern about development priorities and the late game.
 

I’ve been a Zomboid player since year 1, and I’m very excited for the future of the game. I was confident PZ was going to blow up majorly once MP and the anim update came out, and it did!  I trust the IndieStone are going to add a lot of very cool shit over the coming years and make it -even more- popular.
 

At the same time, this forum is a place where people can offer feedback and voice concerns. And that feedback can be useful for the devs. So why be so defensive about it? 
 

I agree that difficulty will likely ramp up nicely with NPCs. I’m especially hoping to see a new meta with loot. If 

NPC groups form in each town and start looting all the houses (happening in the background code in the abstract for the most part) then you might only have a month or so before the easy to loot areas are stripped, forcing you to contend with the higher pop centers or to get out and get creative. Or maybe go a bit mad max. 
 

But still, my issue with PZ is also the same as OP. The sense of tension drains pretty quick once I have secured myself well, with months of food supplies. I’m not against any of the work being done on crafting and husbandry that probably targets long term group survival on servers. But solo play would benefit from some focus on difficulty beyond NPC addition IMO.
 

Maybe actively roaming hordes crossing the map is one option. The adjustment to farming speed that is already happening should hopefully be another. Fishing is also getting tweaked. But maybe needs even greater skill check requirements. The loot table balancing that is occurring might help too. I personally though would like to see some of the hard core mod options brought in to a preset “x years later” mode. Something harder than apocalypse. Search times added and drastically reduced loot volume. Cars more ruined. Everything super overgrown as per that cool mod. Etc.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by Yolan

[EnigmaGrey]

2 hours ago, Yolan said:

Just came to say I agree with IndustryStandard entirely. My impression of this thread is that some people are reacting very defensively towards a pretty reasonable and carefully worded expression of concern about development priorities and the late game.
 

I’ve been a Zomboid player since year 1, and I’m very excited for the future of the game. I was confident PZ was going to blow up majorly once MP and the anim update came out, and it did!  I trust the IndieStone are going to add a lot of very cool shit over the coming years and make it -even more- popular.
 

At the same time, this forum is a place where people can offer feedback and voice concerns. And that feedback can be useful for the devs. So why be so defensive about it? 
 

I agree that difficulty will likely ramp up nicely with NPCs. I’m especially hoping to see a new meta with loot. If 

NPC groups form in each town and start looting all the houses (happening in the background code in the abstract for the most part) then you might only have a month or so before the easy to loot areas are stripped, forcing you to contend with the higher pop centers or to get out and get creative. Or maybe go a bit mad max. 
 

But still, my issue with PZ is also the same as OP. The sense of tension drains pretty quick once I have secured myself well, with months of food supplies. I’m not against any of the work being done on crafting and husbandry that probably targets long term group survival on servers. But solo play would benefit from some focus on difficulty beyond NPC addition IMO.
 

Maybe actively roaming hordes crossing the map is one option. The adjustment to farming speed that is already happening should hopefully be another. Fishing is also getting tweaked. But maybe needs even greater skill check requirements. The loot table balancing that is occurring might help too. I personally though would like to see some of the hard core mod options brought in to a preset “x years later” mode. Something harder than apocalypse. Search times added and drastically reduced loot volume. Cars more ruined. Everything super overgrown as per that cool mod. Etc.

 

 

 

i don’t disagree, but it’s just adding more mid/late game events is only giving more to do, more to overcome. And … then what? Someone will inevitably beat it and we’re back to square one, as the op acknowledges. (At that point I start a new game in most games I play. This seems to be the nature of sandbox games — it’s that or an elaborate quit button as the final event to end the tedium in a less direct manner.)  There’s no winning against some players playing smart and exploiting the game’s systems (and yes, boring themselves). 

 

Don’t get me wrong, more is definitely better and the game needs some sort of ai director and/or additional events, it just seems this line of discussion is ultimately self-terminating: we’re already adding more mid/late game content and steadily moving towards ai/narrative for subsequent builds. I just don’t think it’ll “solve” the “inverse difficulty curve” for all and don’t think it’s even a problem in this style of game.

 

Roaming hordes can naturally happen already, but to have them harry the player, we’d need to do something like the helicopter (silent or otherwise) to force-ably drag zombies to you. I’m not sure that’s what we’re really going for — but giving the player more to do and therefore more reason to venture out and be noticed, can have a similar effect without necessarily needing a hidden dinner bell. I’d personally like to see that, however.

Lot of this can also already be solved with sandbox and challenge modes. 6 months later preset, for example. However, when it comes to apocalypse, we’re already coming up against the game’s rep of being very difficult and with a steep learning curve. It’s unlikely we’d aim to make it even harder (more consistently difficult? Sure) via sandbox options alone.

Edited May 24, 2023 by EnigmaGrey
Try to clarify

[Opaquejaguar286]

On 5/22/2023 at 12:18 PM, IndustryStandard said:

The issue with these takes is that they need to pick a lane, you can't please every crowd no matter how many sandbox settings get created. The more broadly you try to appeal the less tightly designed your game becomes, you'll end up giving a meh experience for everyone instead.

A fair point, no doubt. Offering multiple options or playstyles to deal with the zombie apocalypse isn't the same as trying to please every crowd though. Much like forcing everything toward a single playstyle would be different. Pleasing every crowd and focusing on one are at ends of a spectrum. There is a lot of space in between.

On 5/22/2023 at 12:18 PM, IndustryStandard said:

I don't think a lot of the suggested changes from this post are remotely on a level that would start alienating players and I don't believe at all that just because a portion of the playerbase want things to be a certain way (people that want to just sit in a fortress and never leave) that the developers need to cater to them.

I did not intend to say your earlier suggestions would alienate the players. If that's what you got from it I apologize. If anything those suggestions are perfectly in-line with how this perceived issue should be addressed. Instead of cranking up the zombie threat provide mechanisms to make the player move around more. At least nudge them in this direction.

 

I'd agree the game shouldn't cater to people content to hide in the fortress. I also don't think it needs to prohibit this possibility either though. Why is it wrong if a player can neutralize most of the threats? A large part of the game is about neutralizing threats.

On 5/22/2023 at 12:18 PM, IndustryStandard said:

Project Zomboid sells itself as The hardcore zombie apocalypse simulator game on the store and any changes that further this aspect should be expected and encouraged.

Hardcore is kind of subjective. So is difficult. The fear is reducing all of this down to "Game too easy, make game harder". I'm not saying you're trying to either. It's just a concern it could easily go that route.

[puppers]

Wouldn't it kind of be difficult to make the game "challenging" as humans are pretty adaptive? On top of that a good majority of players utilize workshop mods and some of them can be pretty over powered, at least in my eyes, wouldn't that create another obstacle? 

[IndustryStandard]

Quote

 

I'd agree the game shouldn't cater to people content to hide in the fortress. I also don't think it needs to prohibit this possibility either though. Why is it wrong if a player can neutralize most of the threats? A large part of the game is about neutralizing threats.

 

I only really have a reply for this from your comment since I wasn't really disagree with the other segments. It's not wrong to be able to neutralize threats it's just that currently we have basically none with minimal effort on the players part. I do still think a player with a lot of luck, skill and smart decisions should be excelling at the game but I also think they should still have a lot of things they need to do to achieve that. 

 

As for the why this would be wrong, and I don't think wrong is the best fitting word since locking down in 1 spot should be viable too. Part of it is just protecting players from themselves.

 

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Wouldn't it kind of be difficult to make the game "challenging" as humans are pretty adaptive? On top of that a good majority of players utilize workshop mods and some of them can be pretty over powered, at least in my eyes, wouldn't that create another obstacle? 

 

 

I don't think it'd be difficult at all, no matter how skilled you are at the game some of the suggested ideas I threw out as examples can't be avoided entirely. Like if they added dangerous weather that could damage your crops or base you can't really do much to adapt to this, it's just a freak accident from nature after all. 

As for modding I think if you were intentionally subscribing to mods that made you overpowered then you're kind of the one at fault if you complain the game is easy. If you meant like, TIS having to consider current popular mods when working on updates then they likely just don't do that, can't balance a game around the existence of mods. 

[Yolan]

3 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

I just don’t think it’ll “solve” the “inverse difficulty curve” for all and don’t think it’s even a problem in this style of game.

I get what you mean, and I generally agree. What I think of though as a good example of late game difficulty in a sandbox style game is The Long Dark. Interloper mode is quite a challenge even for experienced players. I’d like to see some equivalent in vanilla PZ. For now, I will content myself with mods and sandbox tweaks.