A couple suggestions about combat...

[Wolf_22]

If you can't tie motor-coordination clumsiness effects to character levels, leave them out entirely or at least make them controllable from something like the game settings one configures when starting a new game.

 

At present, the game has too many arbitrary clumsiness issues... Things like always tripping in the woods when running, or running into walls and falling down, or running and stopping with that weird awkward scoot effect where it looks like the character almost falls off a ledge... And now, talks are increasing about incorporating some sort of random "fall down effect" when walking backwards? No thanks. That'd be a horrible addition. If you think it's something that's needed for entertainment purposes, then your idea of what comprises "fun" is extremely flawed because all those things do is increase levels of frustration one goes through when trying to play a game, and since games are supposed to be fun, well, you can do the math with that. Call me crazy, but I doubt the majority of the players playing this game find those things fun. However, if you're absolutely adamant about adding this kind of mechanic, then at least tie it to the player's ongoing progress with the skills. Agility comes to mind, with said situations of clumsiness never happening when maxed-out on the respective skill. Maybe add a new passive skill, like "Coordination" and tie it to that. But I still vote for just leaving it out entirely or making it a controllable setting prior to starting the game.

 

If you want to incorporate something that's actually fun, refine how your zombie models work by incorporating limb damage. For example, it'd be great to see a pack of zombies heading your way and after taking a double-barrel shotgun to those in the front of the pack, you see some of their arms or heads fly off all over the place after unloading a few shells. It'd add a new level of gore, and if mechanics could be tied to this effect, it'd increase levels of micro-strategy in the sense that an arm-less zombie would be less dangerous as one which is fully intact. The same could then be said about the player's character, too: imagine the challenges of someone in a world like this who loses an arm or leg... Yikes. Seeing a leg-less zombie using its arms to crawl towards you during a fight would be both hilarious and terrifying.

 

And again, like the first points above about clumsiness, this one about limb damage could also be a setting you could control prior to starting a game as some people might not want this.

 

Last but not least suggestion, I hope you'll work on explosions... And in tandem to the limb damage idea, imagine a pipe bomb explosion. Ha.

[getstoopid]

Totally agree on the limb damage!

The "clumsiness" as you put it is somewhat necessary I guess as fighting is too easy at the moment and unrealistic. You can't just backpedal and slap their heads without ever tripping in the real world... especially if you are in the woods and/or bodies lying all around you with puddles of blood and whatnot. If you'd try, you'd surely die...

I agree though that this should become less of a problem with higher skill(s). Primarily I'd tie it to nimble I guess - this skill is already related to combat stance so it would make kinda sense. 

[EnigmaGrey]

I mean different strokes for different folks and more options are always more better, but this isn't meant to be an arcade game. What you consider frusturating is the whole reason most of our audience exists -- we offer something more realistic than what you usually get out of the zombie genre. I'd hope that's fairly clear from the way the game presents itself + how it's described on the store.

 

Skills, traits, and status are already factored into this sort of thing; there's no reason it wouldn't be if we were to add tripping when moon-walking, as well.

[Wolf_22]

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Totally agree on the limb damage!

The "clumsiness" as you put it is somewhat necessary I guess as fighting is too easy at the moment and unrealistic. You can't just backpedal and slap their heads without ever tripping in the real world... especially if you are in the woods and/or bodies lying all around you with puddles of blood and whatnot. If you'd try, you'd surely die...

I agree though that this should become less of a problem with higher skill(s). Primarily I'd tie it to nimble I guess - this skill is already related to combat stance so it would make kinda sense.

 

Really, we forfeit the rights to determine what's realistic and isn't, and to determine what's reasonable vs. unreasonable, the moment we accepted the fact that we're playing a zombie apocalypse game. Because of that, the best approach for any stalemates is to configure things to be controllable prior to a new game and or tying things to leveling. And with all due respect, you don't speak for me or anyone else when it comes to coordination, tripping, accidental falling downs, etc. For all you know, people could exist who never do that and in all honesty, during my 40-something years of life on Earth, I can't remember tripping more than maybe 2 times (all being during sporting events, too), so you can just as easily err on the side of nobody ever doing that or at least doing it less than we see in this game, or, by far the preferred approach and in effort of having the best of both worlds, having it all tied to skills. That way, the higher level the skill is, the less likely the character is to have it happen. The "low-hanging fruit approach" would be to simply make it enabled vs. disabled per-game settings prior to starting a new game. That'd probably be the easiest approach for the developers.

 

 

Quote

I mean different strokes for different folks and more options are always more better, but this isn't meant to be an arcade game. What you consider frusturating is the whole reason most of our audience exists -- we offer something more realistic than what you usually get out of the zombie genre. I'd hope that's fairly clear from the way the game presents itself + how it's described on the store.

 

Skills, traits, and status are already factored into this sort of thing; there's no reason it wouldn't be if we were to add tripping when moon-walking, as well.

 

It's not meant to be a life simulator, either. Constant tripping, running into walls and collapsing, etc. isn't what I'd say equates to being "factored in." Or, if it is, it needs refactored or the control of which diversified to include better mechanisms. And I hope you're not trying to find ways to excuse yourselves from the growing pains inherent to the deficient mechanics this game currently suffers from because I'd like to think you'd take this as an opportunity to consider ways to capitalize from the suggestions and use them to improve things even more. It's not a destination, it's a journey, right? And don't read anything I've written on here as if it's intended to destroy or hurt--I'm not really knocking the game--I love it! Play it all the time! And I want you guys to succeed with it. Heck, it's one of the funnest games I've ever played, to be honest. I'm just trying to suggest ways to make it even better and I know that my suggestions, however simple or difficult they may be to incorporate, would translate to that.

 

Nobody on here is expecting anything to happen overnight. As a developer myself, I fully appreciate what all goes into these things. I'm just hoping you (or whoever) takes these suggestions and adds them to the pot for future considerations is all.

[EnigmaGrey]

There is already a difference between sneak, walk, jog, and sprint. There are weight and coordination traits. There’s already the nimble and strength traits.

 

 And ofc, there’s the most important bit of all: not running balls out into things in the first place. That, by itself, sorts this problem. Consider the cause of the effect.

[Wolf_22]

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And ofc, there’s the most important bit of all: not running balls out into things in the first place. That, by itself, sorts this problem. Consider the cause of the effect.

 

Are you the guy who added mandatory tripping when running in the woods regardless of circumstances? Because if so, then you contradict yourself because the cause of that effect is what, the invisible assortment of ant hills, squirrel poop, and crawdad holes littering the forest floor that we should be able to see well enough to dodge and not run "balls out" into? But I get it: it's the player's fault for foolishly depending on their ocular senses.

[Badgzerz]

Its not mandatory, stop full tilt sprinting everywhere. Sprinting through the wilderness while carrying weight is how you get yourself a broken leg and a search & rescue team and that is true no matter how fit you are. Put on a 30kg rucksack and go for a hike; zomboid is very generous. You are doing something wrong to be this clumsy. 

[EnigmaGrey]

9 hours ago, Wolf_22 said:

 

Are you the guy who added mandatory tripping when running in the woods regardless of circumstances? Because if so, then you contradict yourself because the cause of that effect is what, the invisible assortment of ant hills, squirrel poop, and crawdad holes littering the forest floor that we should be able to see well enough to dodge and not run "balls out" into? But I get it: it's the player's fault for foolishly depending on their ocular senses.

Newp. I’m the guy that asked it get toned down.
 

 So, to confirm, you do know there’s a difference between sprinting (alt) and running (shift)? To spell it out: more speed results in more risk. You can entirely negate this by walking.

 

Regardless of that, you’re falling not due to invisible obstacles, but because you ran full-speed into a tree or brush. (Or a wall, or a fence, or the zombies.)

[getstoopid]

14 hours ago, Wolf_22 said:

in all honesty, during my 40-something years of life on Earth, I can't remember tripping more than maybe 2 times

Maybe you have a very short memory? But even so, I would assume that you usually don't fight for your life while backpedaling over dead bodies and litter or through the woods... 

[EnigmaGrey]

1 hour ago, getstoopid said:

Maybe you have a very short memory? But even so, I would assume that you usually don't fight for your life while backpedaling over dead bodies and litter or through the woods... 

Just to avoid confusion: there's no real penalty to kiting right now beyond a short pause when you swing the weapon. It doesn't mater if you do it over corpses, curbs, brush, or into trees.

That makes it obnoxiously over-powered. You're basically invincible when backpedalling  and constantly swinging with (especially with higher nimble skill) unless something sneaks up behind you. It makes dealing with groups of zombies simple, so naturally we'd want to balance that. Should we eventually address it, there'll be sandbox options for it, but it does need to be addressed because the base game builds its fun on over-coming challenges (sometimes that means yourself -- be it refusing to learn how the game plays or bringing your own assumptions to it) not just being able to murder hordes with impunity from day 0, be it by kiting or by fire.

[Wolf_22]

8 hours ago, getstoopid said:

Maybe you have a very short memory? But even so, I would assume that you usually don't fight for your life while backpedaling over dead bodies and litter or through the woods... 

 

Right, but what I also don't find myself doing is colliding with walls when running, tripping over invisible obstacles out in the woods, breaking windows with my bare hands despite having crowbars in backpacks, or seeing your zombies somehow pass through my vehicle's windshields to bite my neck that's protected by multiple layers of military-grade protective clothing causing instant death without a single ounce of time given to at least raise a hand in protest, either, but lo-and-behold, here we are!

 

But I get it: you're an Indie Stone roadie fanboy acolyte who always sides with their developers even when common sense is biting your neck. You must do really well with the Minecraft cult.

 

 

Quote

...because the base game builds its fun on over-coming challenges (sometimes that means yourself -- be it refusing to learn how the game plays or bringing your own assumptions to it) not just being able to murder hordes with impunity from day 0, be it by kiting or by fire.

 

What you don't realize is that you glossed over the word reasonable when remarking about what you believe the players believe to be fun about this game. Because it's one thing to deliberately incorporate controlled difficulty contexts into the mechanics for players to play through, but it's another to punt usability dysfunction off onto the player base by absolving yourself from it via claims of "it's part of the game." That's just lazy design. I mean, you can do that if you want--it's not like I'm going to be able to stop you--but you're not fooling anyone. At least, not me, and I guess we'll see how long you get away with it.

[EnigmaGrey]

15 hours ago, Wolf_22 said:

 

Right, but what I also don't find myself doing is colliding with walls when running, tripping over invisible obstacles out in the woods, breaking windows with my bare hands despite having crowbars in backpacks, or seeing your zombies somehow pass through my vehicle's windshields to bite my neck that's protected by multiple layers of military-grade protective clothing causing instant death without a single ounce of time given to at least raise a hand in protest, either, but lo-and-behold, here we are!

 

But I get it: you're an Indie Stone roadie fanboy acolyte who always sides with their developers even when common sense is biting your neck. You must do really well with the Minecraft cult.

 

 

 

What you don't realize is that you glossed over the word reasonable when remarking about what you believe the players believe to be fun about this game. Because it's one thing to deliberately incorporate controlled difficulty contexts into the mechanics for players to play through, but it's another to punt usability dysfunction off onto the player base by absolving yourself from it via claims of "it's part of the game." That's just lazy design. I mean, you can do that if you want--it's not like I'm going to be able to stop you--but you're not fooling anyone. At least, not me, and I guess we'll see how long you get away with it.

I mean the meta of this is that "it's on you to learn how to play the game, it's quirks and features, and to act accordingly." If you can't do that, or you don't enjoy it, then all I can suggest is either tweaking it in sandbox, using mods, or finding something else to play. There's no point trying to force it, you'll only frustrate yourself and others.

 

In detail:
* You don't understand how the movement system works. Sprinting is meant to go fast in a straight line. If you encounter obstacles, you're going to have a bad time, full stop (pun intended). Same thing for the forest -- there are no "invisible obstacles."
* You're in control of your character. It's your responsibility to equip 'em with weapons. Don't blame the game for failing to reach into your backpack and doing it for you.
* We've never been able to reproduce the instant-bite thing, outside of the Hypochonriac trait. Of late, some users have mentioned that they healed themselfs in debug mode, likely only removing the wound state instead of overall infection. They get infected again, they're already fatally infected they instantly die.
* Zombies can't bite you through the windshield? Do you mean car doors? The reason they can bite you through a door is that you interrupted the close door command by doing something, like driving away immediately after getting into the car. That there is not a visual indicator that the door is open or closed is indeed "our bad" but now you know. Don't interrupt the action; wait for the door close sound to play. It takes roughly a third of a second. (If the car door window was down or smashed, they can also bite through that, naturally.)

There is obvious cause and effect in all this.
You ran into a tree, you fell.
You ran into a wall, you fell.
You didn't equip a weapon. Your hand got cut smashing the window.
You got into a car and immediately drove away. The door wasn't closed and you got bit.
 

There's observable cause and effect. Unless you refuse to experiment and learn from it, it should be "fairly" intuitive, aside from the last one.
 

You are not the arbitrator of what is right or good in game design outside of your own personal self. Don't expect others to agree with your personal feeling of what is reasonable, good, or lazy -- especially not when there's millions of people who've bought and seemingly largely liked the game at this point.

Regardless, you have sandbox and mods. You can make it (almost) anything you want without our intervention. If you disagree with any of the above, feel free to use the tools you were given and help yourself.

[getstoopid]

15 hours ago, Wolf_22 said:

common sense is biting your neck

Wait no! When the game kills me than it was my fault for sure! That's what we roadie fanboy acolytes tend to believe... what do I say, I meant what we KNOW! 

 

You know you're sounding like an angry little child ragequitting because the game is sooo unfair! You said you're in your 40+? Hard to believe actually...

 

Noone said this game is perfect or anywhere near finished and yeah it really takes a long time. But guess what, you could just lay it down for a while and try again when the next update comes out. In this and the other thread about losing your character all you do is ranting, even if you think of it as "constructive criticism" it doesn't really sound like it. Criticism should be in a respectful and friendly tone.

We all know the mechanics of the game are broken in some situations, nothing new here. Most of the players just live with it and wait for a fix. 

So, what is it you really want? What did you expect would be the response on your posts?

An  apology from the devs or sympathy from other players? Then you should work on your attitude. 

 

[Wolf_22]

9 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

I mean the meta of this is that "it's on you to learn how to play the game, it's quirks and features, and to act accordingly." If you can't do that, or you don't enjoy it, then all I can suggest is either tweaking it in sandbox, using mods, or finding something else to play. There's no point trying to force it, you'll only frustrate yourself and others.

 

In detail:
* You don't understand how the movement system works. Sprinting is meant to go fast in a straight line. If you encounter obstacles, you're going to have a bad time, full stop (pun intended). Same thing for the forest -- there are no "invisible obstacles."
* You're in control of your character. It's your responsibility to equip 'em with weapons. Don't blame the game for failing to reach into your backpack and doing it for you.
* We've never been able to reproduce the instant-bite thing, outside of the Hypochonriac trait. Of late, some users have mentioned that they healed themselfs in debug mode, likely only removing the wound state instead of overall infection. They get infected again, they're already fatally infected they instantly die.
* Zombies can't bite you through the windshield? Do you mean car doors? The reason they can bite you through a door is that you interrupted the close door command by doing something, like driving away immediately after getting into the car. That there is not a visual indicator that the door is open or closed is indeed "our bad" but now you know. Don't interrupt the action; wait for the door close sound to play. It takes roughly a third of a second. (If the car door window was down or smashed, they can also bite through that, naturally.)

There is obvious cause and effect in all this.
You ran into a tree, you fell.
You ran into a wall, you fell.
You didn't equip a weapon. Your hand got cut smashing the window.
You got into a car and immediately drove away. The door wasn't closed and you got bit.
 

There's observable cause and effect. Unless you refuse to experiment and learn from it, it should be "fairly" intuitive, aside from the last one.
 

You are not the arbitrator of what is right or good in game design outside of your own personal self. Don't expect others to agree with your personal feeling of what is reasonable, good, or lazy -- especially not when there's millions of people who've bought and seemingly largely liked the game at this point.

Regardless, you have sandbox and mods. You can make it (almost) anything you want without our intervention. If you disagree with any of the above, feel free to use the tools you were given and help yourself.

 

Next time, just type out, "It's the player's fault; don't care."

 

 

8 hours ago, getstoopid said:

Wait no! When the game kills me than it was my fault for sure! That's what we roadie fanboy acolytes tend to believe... what do I say, I meant what we KNOW! 

 

You know you're sounding like an angry little child ragequitting because the game is sooo unfair! You said you're in your 40+? Hard to believe actually...

 

Noone said this game is perfect or anywhere near finished and yeah it really takes a long time. But guess what, you could just lay it down for a while and try again when the next update comes out. In this and the other thread about losing your character all you do is ranting, even if you think of it as "constructive criticism" it doesn't really sound like it. Criticism should be in a respectful and friendly tone.

We all know the mechanics of the game are broken in some situations, nothing new here. Most of the players just live with it and wait for a fix. 

So, what is it you really want? What did you expect would be the response on your posts?

An  apology from the devs or sympathy from other players? Then you should work on your attitude. 

 

 

Your input never mattered anyway. ;.)

[EnigmaGrey]

My dude, if you’re “happy” being the guy that argues with the wall they just ran into for getting in their way, then by all means, you do you do. But nothing about that should be taken as me not caring, or I’d have not wasted my time at all. Not getting your way doesn’t mean people don’t care just as being frustrated with a game doesn’t mean the game is at fault.

[PoshRocketeer]

On 11/16/2023 at 9:08 AM, Wolf_22 said:

If you can't tie motor-coordination clumsiness effects to character levels, leave them out entirely or at least make them controllable from something like the game settings one configures when starting a new game.

 

At present, the game has too many arbitrary clumsiness issues... Things like always tripping in the woods when running, or running into walls and falling down, or running and stopping with that weird awkward scoot effect where it looks like the character almost falls off a ledge... And now, talks are increasing about incorporating some sort of random "fall down effect" when walking backwards? No thanks. That'd be a horrible addition. If you think it's something that's needed for entertainment purposes, then your idea of what comprises "fun" is extremely flawed because all those things do is increase levels of frustration one goes through when trying to play a game, and since games are supposed to be fun, well, you can do the math with that. Call me crazy, but I doubt the majority of the players playing this game find those things fun. However, if you're absolutely adamant about adding this kind of mechanic, then at least tie it to the player's ongoing progress with the skills. Agility comes to mind, with said situations of clumsiness never happening when maxed-out on the respective skill. Maybe add a new passive skill, like "Coordination" and tie it to that. But I still vote for just leaving it out entirely or making it a controllable setting prior to starting the game.

 

If you want to incorporate something that's actually fun, refine how your zombie models work by incorporating limb damage. For example, it'd be great to see a pack of zombies heading your way and after taking a double-barrel shotgun to those in the front of the pack, you see some of their arms or heads fly off all over the place after unloading a few shells. It'd add a new level of gore, and if mechanics could be tied to this effect, it'd increase levels of micro-strategy in the sense that an arm-less zombie would be less dangerous as one which is fully intact. The same could then be said about the player's character, too: imagine the challenges of someone in a world like this who loses an arm or leg... Yikes. Seeing a leg-less zombie using its arms to crawl towards you during a fight would be both hilarious and terrifying.

 

And again, like the first points above about clumsiness, this one about limb damage could also be a setting you could control prior to starting a game as some people might not want this.

 

Last but not least suggestion, I hope you'll work on explosions... And in tandem to the limb damage idea, imagine a pipe bomb explosion. Ha.

Hey so I'm pretty sure the discussion of a random backpedal falldown was a joke that Engima briefly mentioned to me a few years ago when I was new to the game and pretty salty about bites being "instant" death, and if you're referring to my suggestion then you totally missed the point of what I was saying, because I deliberately said that it shouldn't be random, it should be tied to backpedaling over corpses with low nimble which is an entirely forseeable, avoidable action that would mean you had to decide whether or not you should fight in a corridor or area loaded with bodies, or lead the horde to somewhere less occupied, and make corpse management more worth while.

I disagree  the idea that player input does or does not matter, I've gotten some reception from QA regarding things related to pushing zombies and sound design as of late, and probably something else that I just don't remember. On the flip side, I've definitely had (mostly) healthy disagreements with the devs on things that I thought obvious (like the hotbar condition indicators being removed). I'd say that they're pretty receptive, but they have a very firm idea of what they want to make and will not always agree with the players, and it's their game, so in the end it is entirely their say, all we can do is give suggestions and hope that some of them catch on. Arguing with the dev and insulting him is not how you go about that, and I can say that because I've done it, once upon a time.

 

I also don't think that just because QA doesn't respond or react to a post that they haven't read or even considered it, I think it has more to do with the size of suggestions, relevance to the current priorities of the dev team, and how much they want to emphasize that the feedback was heard regarding a particular topic.  Some of the devs here can be a little abrasive, but I really think you'd do well to listen to them, they aren't just being jerks for the sake of it, they're getting testy because you're being obstinate. 

Edited November 20, 2023 by PoshRocketeer

[Wolf_22]

2 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

My dude, if you’re “happy” being the guy that argues with the wall they just ran into for getting in their way, then by all means, you do you do. But nothing about that should be taken as me not caring, or I’d have not wasted my time at all. Not getting your way doesn’t mean people don’t care just as being frustrated with a game doesn’t mean the game is at fault.

 

I submitted a suggestion, and since the onset of these little back-and-forths, you've done nothing but either push back against good ideas, blame the player, or just choose not to care. Your example gave me what I wanted: an explanation for the plethora of problems this game has. To that end, I actually got what I wanted.

 

Running into walls, tripping over nonexistent obstacles, being bitten through vehicles, and so much more... It all comes from people like you (well, you and that other doofus above).

[EnigmaGrey]

Read the thread again, then. You seem to have missed most of it.

[PoshRocketeer]

49 minutes ago, Wolf_22 said:

 

 

Running into walls, tripping over nonexistent obstacles, being bitten through vehicles, and so much more... It all comes from people like you (well, you and that other doofus above).

Damn  bro you really got me, I'm such a doofus. 

 

Enjoy being bad at the video game and seething, I guess.

Edited November 20, 2023 by PoshRocketeer

[Unamelable]

I AM STRONGLY OPPOSED TO TRIPPING IN AGILITY POSE.

I have no idea what sadomasochist came up with the idea of adding this to combat, the vanilla game is inherently difficult enough as it is. And I as a person who has about 900 hours can safely say that this feature should NOT be added. You already hate your character for being "dumb" and sometimes making mistakes beyond your control. Which is why I'm getting used to "manual control" faster now, because auto-targeting is just awful. So and so will not depend on YOUR ERROR.

Take the situation that you are in a building, agility as a skill is pumped incredibly long. And you accidentally stumble in the corridor and zombies come at you. And knowing how long it takes to get up a character WHO IS IN DANGER. It's instant Game Over.

In this game, it takes a very long time to level up by standard. And dying for a "cool idea" is kind of weird, you know? In this game such suggestions completely break the gameplay as a whole, because in this game one scratch decides the fate of your character. And if you want to play a long game, you shouldn't have this kind of random. Or at least add an effective way to levelup agility because in the game it is the most difficult to accumulate experience skill

Edited November 24, 2023 by Unamelable

[EnigmaGrey]

You do realize that considering agility would just mean that you’d have less chance of a bump turning into a fall at higher levels, no? That is, you’d have additional tools to mitigate it. Right now, the only thing you have the weight traits.

 

 There’s no need for doom and gloom over stuff like this. We’re not going to severely alter the way the game plays after 12 years, after all.