Project Zomboid - This is how it Dies.

[EnigmaGrey]

It’s more like having 30 projects going at once, (some big, some small) because there’s no possible way to have everyone working on a single thing (Different skills, different interests, different reasons for being hired, living in different counties across the globe). Several of those projects come together, and you have yourself a major build.

 

They don’t steal from one another; they don’t delay one or the other. But people who really don’t know insist they must — because more people mean faster, right?

 

No. More people mean wider and deeper, if a large project takes a long time. Many small projects get done.

[Unamelable]

24 minutes ago, EnigmaGrey said:

It’s more like having 30 projects going at once, (some big, some small) because there’s no possible way to have everyone working on a single thing (Different skills, different interests, different reasons for being hired, living in different counties across the globe). Several of those projects come together, and you have yourself a major build.

 

They don’t steal from one another; they don’t delay one or the other. But people who really don’t know insist they must — because more people mean faster, right?

 

No. More people mean wider and deeper, if a large project takes a long time. Many small projects get done.

So, basicly you have like teams around the world but never using office to develop the game? If its true why you do that?

And because ppl making small projects (to make it done for huge update). Its becoming a big project, but because its an update its a lot easier to make it done (if of course there people who know how game works, and because you hired new workers its becoming a problem to introduce where exact moment is working so that employee gonna make it like 0.3-0.8% faster just because he know more internals about giant game named Project Zomboid.

 

Gamedev is a real clusterfuck and i kinda feel it.

 

POV Everyone waiting 2 yrs for B42: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwPipwcWgK4

Edited December 23, 2023 by Unamelable

[Unamelable]

Like as example Black Mesa go through really painful road but at the end it need 15 YEARS to get it to release. But because its a remake so you basicly have blueprints of OG game. But because its coming out not from AAA studio, and because its have such a good quality at the end its just fantastic. Project Zomboid was in development 12 years and because the project is much larger "because of huge goals like Sims" its kinda obvious that a little team can't handle this intime. Im again, can only hope that TIS aren't gonna close up until release because again PZ suffer from many issues today. Its far away from the "perfect" lets say.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Unamelable

[Unamelable]

1 hour ago, EnigmaGrey said:

I mean I got tired of left for dead after around 20 hours so I’m not really sure I buy that (it’s very predictable, just as any non truly random game is), nor am I interested in making an addictive gambling game. (The idea that people might be addicted to PZ is already bad enough …)
 

We’re really not “making an absolute new route” either. This is fleshing out the existing systems for the most part. That’s exactly what I mean about people letting their imaginations run away …

 

Here. 2011 good enough? https://projectzomboid.com/blog/tldr-just-give-me-the-jist/

 

Why would we not make the most all-encompassing game we can, exactly? Do you just expect us to stagnate and be content with whatever was thought possible in the early years? Just ignore our contemporaries and not compete with them? Live in fear of the nebulous and ill defined “feature creep” in a genre that’s outright expects the widest possible set of features (survival sandbox)?
 

Do you not actually want us to persist and make the best game possible, even when there’s clearly millions of people who want that by the very fact we survived this long?

 

Why does speed (and scope) matter more than making a good game or not?

L4D Have punishable Expert difficulty where you have secure yourself much as possible because 1 hit from any enemy drain a big chunk of HP. So health management go at first place with awareness of the team. Plus again - Sadistic AI as i putted examples right there

[EnigmaGrey]

“Teams” meaning individual people for the most part. We’re not that big.

 

There’s no need to force everyone into an office. The cost would be astronomical for absolutely no gain. We’d end up losing staff who can’t or won’t move and probably shuttering in a year or two if we were to do that. That’s the way you kill a company, not speed up development.

 

… I don’t see the point in getting into the rest of it.

 

So: We’re slow. We’ll focus on making the best game we can rather than doing things fast and loose. You can see that this has always worked out well despite it being a constant source of complaints, no matter the time between updates, over the past 12 years. You’ll just have to make peace with that. 

[Blair Algol]

It's important to keep in mind that videos, like the ones you posted, ultimately consist of opinion pieces or other content that is published to YouTube in order to generate engagement and ad revenue, and, as such, they can and will make all sorts of claims, ones that people will agree with in the comments.

That doesn't mean that they're factual or accurate; they're not journalism or a peer reviewed study, or really held to any standards aside from the basic YouTube community standards. There's many examples of inaccurate videos on YouTube that people have watched and agreed with.

I can publish an entertaining video about how Birds Aren't Real and get a 100,000 views and hundreds of comments supporting it's position, YouTube isn't indicative of reality.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Blair Algol

[Unamelable]

1 minute ago, Blair Algol said:

It's important to keep in mind that videos, like the ones you posted, ultimately consist of opinion pieces or other content that is published to YouTube in order to generate engagement and ad revenue, and, as such, they can and will make all sorts of claims, ones that people will agree with in the comments.

That doesn't mean that they're factual or accurate; they're not journalism or a peer reviewed study, or really held to any standards aside from the basic YouTube community standards. There's many examples of inaccurate videos on YouTube that people have watched and agreed with.

I can publish an entertaining video about how Birds Aren't Real and get a 100,000 views and hundreds of comments supporting it's position, YouTube isn't indicative of reality.

How do you think people evaluate something? There will never be truth, everything is based on personal opinion. If there are several such opinions, then this is the case. Plus I added my own. If we live in a world where no one will criticize or defend their point of view. Then in the world there will be a lot of bad, cheaper and mostly low-quality products, solutions, ideas, and so on.

 

This is what you need to start from in order to decide what is available. Because if you just remain silent, it won’t go anywhere for the better. Especially when the discontent of society/community grows.

 

Yes, and I’m sure that the people who published their opinions are trying to benefit from it. Of course, unless a person appears who will compare and find fault with absolutely every little detail and mechanics of a game that even the developers do not have a final release.

[getstoopid]

You mean like your posts? I mean seriously there is not much positive about the game in your statements aside from the "I really love the game.." followed by a big but

[EnigmaGrey]

You just have to guard yourself against your own bias. That is, be critical of yourself and what reinforces your belief, not just the thing you feel deserves criticism.

 

So you have a game that sold millions of copies in the last few years, has more players per hour after a year without updates than it did for the 8-9 years, and has exceedingly positive reviews, yet also most of that success comes from people none of us will ever hear from, who played far less than any of us will ever play (at least as forum members). Is it really going to die because of the contents of this thread or the criticism of those YouTube videos?

 

Being a pessimist and someone that works on the game, who got a job because I was unrelentingly critical of the game and worked my way from tech support to management by filling any perceived holes I could, and yet saw it succeed despite my concerns and dour predictions, when I criticize myself and my own response to this, I lean towards “No. it’s more likely these criticisms come from fatigue due to playing the game 10x over those and wanting to reignite the spark with the new update and, in some cases, it comes from hitching one’s star to the game and depending on it to generate more content to survive (finding difficulty in pivoting to other things).” (At least for now — there are limits to everything, just compared to the bad old days, a year is nothing. It’s also year without breaking mods, without destroying saves, without fatigue from small updates, to boot.)

 

When dealing with people, there’s just more than what’s being said. There’s what’s driving it and what it means and what they might have actually meant but couldn’t express clearly, even what they remembered differently from what happened. And worse, it’s mostly personal opinion , all the way down, and therefore inaccurate and imprecise. You can’t just take anything at face value and run with it, even if it agrees with your position (or speaks to one’s anxieties).

[Nilth]

On 12/23/2023 at 1:54 AM, EnigmaGrey said:

“Teams” meaning individual people for the most part. We’re not that big.

 

There’s no need to force everyone into an office. The cost would be astronomical for absolutely no gain. We’d end up losing staff who can’t or won’t move and probably shuttering in a year or two if we were to do that. That’s the way you kill a company, not speed up development.

 

… I don’t see the point in getting into the rest of it.

 

So: We’re slow. We’ll focus on making the best game we can rather than doing things fast and loose. You can see that this has always worked out well despite it being a constant source of complaints, no matter the time between updates, over the past 12 years. You’ll just have to make peace with that. 

Read the 'wall of text' answer :D. Thank you, it was an interesting read.

Btw my "external (and uninformed) impression" right now is that you have a pretty nice and functional team, and that's where I found strange that so much time is needed to get out B42. But tbh it's probably me wanting more from this game, because B42 already has a lot of stuff.

 

I also wanted to address what you wrote here:

Quote

No game can withstand that level of scrutiny,  provide the content necessary to fulfill the desire for novelty, or act as a vehicle to create content for when it’s effectively being played over and over again hundreds of times.

 

Actually, at least from my perspective, PZ is incredibly good in this regard. I mean: every time I play (and die) again, I always set up different objectives.

Even if I start with the same character in the same city, there's always something different in my strategy because of what I've learned from my previous playthrough. And of course what happens to you every single day is unpredictable and that (at least for me) is what makes this game incredibly fun to play every time.

 

That said, I know it could be much, much more, both in the key aspects of gameplay that are still missing, and in all those (not so) little details that could feed the replayability I was talking about: in one sentence, "give the survivor something to live for", something that makes him/her depart from his safehouse and risk his life. That's the direction that I hope the game is taking, because it would multiply a lot the 'fun' I was taking about and the unique reaplyability this game has.

 

 

Merry Christmas to you all.

Edited December 25, 2023 by Nilth

[Jack Bower]

Still waiting on them fixing multiplayer gun stun animation lock. Most RP servers don't even accept mechanical combat because it is so janky. 

[Unamelable]

29 minutes ago, Jack Bower said:

Still waiting on them fixing multiplayer gun stun animation lock. Most RP servers don't even accept mechanical combat because it is so janky. 

Just don't play MP combat, its absolutely terrible

 

 

[Unamelable]

2 hours ago, Nilth said:

Read the 'wall of text' answer :D. Thank you, it was an interesting read.

Btw my "external (and uninformed) impression" right now is that you have a pretty nice and functional team, and that's where I found strange that so much time is needed to get out B42. But tbh it's probably me wanting more from this game, because B42 already has a lot of stuff.

 

I also wanted to address what you wrote here:

 

Actually, at least from my perspective, PZ is incredibly good in this regard. I mean: every time I play (and die) again, I always set up different objectives.

Even if I start with the same character in the same city, there's always something different in my strategy because of what I've learned from my previous playthrough. And of course what happens to you every single day is unpredictable and that (at least for me) is what makes this game incredibly fun to play every time.

 

That said, I know it could be much, much more, both in the key aspects of gameplay that are still missing, and in all those (not so) little details that could feed the replayability I was talking about: in one sentence, "give the survivor something to live for", something that makes him/her depart from his safehouse and risk his life. That's the direction that I hope the game is taking, because it would multiply a lot the 'fun' I was taking about and the unique reaplyability this game has.

 

 

Merry Christmas to you all.

Well if they making nomad style of play. With absolutely new system of crafting in wildness. What the point of zombies then? Of course if you play multiplayer server where everything is looted you have to create tools yourself. But if we talking about zomboid. Core game. ZOMBIES. They just gonna ignore that fact that core element of game? Yes i can upgrade cattle breeding, crafting, smithing. Make a personal comfort zone that I explore. And I will still get bored because there are still no NPCs in the game. And the only entertainment for players in this game is killing zombies. Of course you have to scavenge remnants of what is left of civilization. But I think the team is going in the wrong direction because they are trying to make Rust instead of Zomboid.

 

Let's say they did everything, added Animal NPC's, Human NPC's, Crafting and wildness update. Generation beyond Kentucky. What's left of the zombies? We don't have any enemies, only people who are aggressive to us. If at the end we remove the zombies, let’s say several years have passed since the apocalypse and there are extremely few of them. What will happen then?

 

It won't be Project Zomboid anymore.

[EnigmaGrey]

1 hour ago, Jack Bower said:

Still waiting on them fixing multiplayer gun stun animation lock. Most RP servers don't even accept mechanical combat because it is so janky. 

The option to disable it is in the server’s settings. Though no idea if it works, as it was added last minute to address complaints, as it is indeed silly/awful. Only heard back from 1-2 people and it wasn’t positive, iirc.

 

Should be a few of then with “knockback” in the name. One for melee, one for ranged, iirc.

 

 Give it a go and let us know.

[mixeycray]

To be clear, are the bugs you’re referring to things that those mods fix? Because if so, a lot of those seem counter to the vanilla game vs “fixing” it. That is, I think overall your take on what is fitting simply doesn’t match ours.  

[Unctuous Robot]

Frankly this is all unacceptable. Why can't TIS learn from a real company like EA who puts out $1000 worth of Sims 4 dlc and yet the game is so full of horrible bugs it's the only video game I've ever genuinely gotten mad at? Closing and reopening the Zomboid in debug mode to cure myself after accidentally hitting the windows key because I got bit before I could reopen the game since it didn't pause automatically is the worst thing that's ever happened in history.

Edited January 25 by Unctuous Robot

[getstoopid]

...made my day! xD

[Axiomatic]

If you think its tough for dedicated players like yourself and myself (around 1200 hours now) to have to wait this long for the next big patch release....imagine how hard it is for TIS staff who work on this more hours than we play it, having to wait to get all their hard work out to the public for everyone to enjoy. OP, you need to get over yourself and take a break from PZ. Play something else for awhile. Come back later. The game will still be there, and you'll be in a better headspace or the game will have been updated bringing about many of the updates and fixes we're all waiting for.

 

As a lifelong gamer who really crashed hard into it on the original NES as a kid in the late 80s, and spent a stupidly large amount of time playing games since then, I can easily say that PZ represents one of the top three games that allows players to create their own narrative in a really open ended fashion. Its one of the best narrative generators I've ever come across. And the game only gets better when you embrace it as a story creator driven by you the player. Morrowind is the other game that comes easily to mind in this regard. 

[odizzido]

I am an occasional player of this game. I enjoy it when I play, though my last run was cut short because steam decided W7 wasn't good enough anymore so I lost access to all my steam games on my main PC.

 

Anyways, this game has come along pretty well I think. I will probably start a game up when 42 comes out whenever that is. No rush.

 

As to learning from EA?...geez, I hope not. The person who started TIS would need to start sending death threats to their employees, punching people, sexually assaulting people, and generally start being human garbage that stays above the law since they're rich because they've managed to scam an enormous number of people with their "games". That's EA. I hope TIS stays away from all of that.

[MadDan]

10 hours ago, odizzido said:

I am an occasional player of this game. I enjoy it when I play, though my last run was cut short because steam decided W7 wasn't good enough anymore so I lost access to all my steam games on my main PC.

 

Anyways, this game has come along pretty well I think. I will probably start a game up when 42 comes out whenever that is. No rush.

 

As to learning from EA?...geez, I hope not. The person who started TIS would need to start sending death threats to their employees, punching people, sexually assaulting people, and generally start being human garbage that stays above the law since they're rich because they've managed to scam an enormous number of people with their "games". That's EA. I hope TIS stays away from all of that.

That "learning from EA" post above was purely facetious. Thankfully.

[Unctuous Robot]

Facetious? What do you mean? The devs need to up the price and start rereleasing Zomboid every year with Bob and Kate's names changed in the debug scenario menu (or at least I think they were there, I forget). As it is I just don't feel a sense of pride and accomplishment having only paid twenty bucks for the game. 

[EnigmaGrey]

2 hours ago, Unctuous Robot said:

Facetious? What do you mean? The devs need to up the price and start rereleasing Zomboid every year with Bob and Kate's names changed in the debug scenario menu (or at least I think they were there, I forget). As it is I just don't feel a sense of pride and accomplishment having only paid twenty bucks for the game. 

 That’s right.

 

LuteBoxes, macrotransfers, deal-c, sisään passé, expulsions. Jack up the price to $120 as befitting “early access.” Gotta catch em all.

[getstoopid]

Totally in on it... where should I send my money to? I also want the premium 1-week-season pack with extra loot and exclusive starting crowbar

[Unamelable]

On 2/1/2024 at 8:29 AM, getstoopid said:

Totally in on it... where should I send my money to? I also want the premium 1-week-season pack with extra loot and exclusive starting crowbar

Gotta pay extra 20$ for Axe Bundle, and probably Spiffo Bundle for 120$

[Unctuous Robot]

Hey we should all be careful, I heard that TIS deletes forum posts containing objective criticism from the community. Especially you EnigmaGrey, EngimaGrey might banish you to the depths of Daikatana like they did to the guy who made this thread.