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Does PZ really even need cars?


Rikashey

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Well, most cars can't just drive off the road and into a woodland path to chase down a deer or frolic in the warmth of the afternoon sun. Sure, maybe a truck could do that, but a regular, everyday car would get stuck in the mud, etc...

 

Was that directed at me? :huh:

 

The deer or kangaroo was an analogy for the damage that Zed would do to your car if you hit him.... Stupid animals walk up to the highway, get spooked by the noise & dart out in front of on coming traffic.... If your the poor bastard who gets hit, your down a car. (better hope you have a mobile phone..... & insurance :P)

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Since the cars will be littering the street i guess you will need to move more on foot. 

Ramming a zombie at high speeds could be more dangerous for the driver than the zombie since he wont give a damn about begin ran over, he is going to try and eat you anyway.

 

Oh god now that i think about it....

 

How the flying hell are the NPCs suppost to drive?

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Im a little undecided on it.

 

On one side I'd like cars there for ambience and for interacting / looting with.

For example, using the Horn to attract zombies or checking the trunk for supplies. It'll also make the world feel busier more organic.

 

However I feel that having vehicles would mean less time interacting with Zombies. It certainly was that way in DayZ.

I can't shake this feeling that vehicles will just cheapen the difficulty of the game and remove that sense of achievement when you migrate from one city to the other on foot. 

 

I could probably go with Bicycles.

 

Like I said, I'm a little undecided.

People look to make the game easier, I look to make it more difficult.

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Im a little undecided on it.

 

On one side I'd like cars there for ambience and for interacting / looting with.

For example, using the Horn to attract zombies or checking the trunk for supplies. It'll also make the world feel busier more organic.

 

However I feel that having vehicles would mean less time interacting with Zombies. It certainly was that way in DayZ.

I can't shake this feeling that vehicles will just cheapen the difficulty of the game and remove that sense of achievement when you migrate from one city to the other on foot. 

 

I could probably go with Bicycles.

 

Like I said, I'm a little undecided.

People look to make the game easier, I look to make it more difficult.

I don't see it as making the game any easier. It's just another feature that has it's ups and downs. Also things like vehicles aren't supposed to be the things that balance the game's difficulty. That should be done totally elsewhere. ie. z-migration, amounts, behaviour, combat etc. Of course this doesn't mean they don't have to balanced, but rather they have to be balanced so that they fit the, at the time, present difficulty.

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I understand what you're saying about balancing the game in other areas, Suomiboi, but I'm still not convinced that the game will continue to play the way it does if vehicles are added and isolating/protecting vehicles from when it comes to balancing descisions isn't a great idea.

 

My excitement comes from running away from hordes. Jumping fences. Panic bashing a window open so that I can try to lose the zombies in a house. Running through trees to escape. Then getting caught by an unseen crawler in the woods...

 

If I had a car it would be a case of "oh no, a horde...pffft lol". Jump into car, slam on accelarator and laugh at the shamblers as they vanish into the horizon behind me.

 

This is what I mean when I say vehicles would lessen or cheapen the player-zombie interaction.

Then, as mentioned in another post, think about how Multiplayer would play out. I don't even want to go there haha.

 

It all depends on how Indie Stone want to tackle vehicles. They've done a cracking good job of risk-reward so far so I'm interested to see what they do with it. :)

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If I had a car it would be a case of "oh no, a horde...pffft lol". Jump into car, slam on accelarator and laugh at the shamblers as they vanish into the horizon behind me.

Then drive halfway to West Point and run out of gas... Or hit a zombie/tree/bear :D while trying to speed away, or not get the car running etc. As you said it depends on how they're implemented, but I don't see how balancing a system has anything to do with adding a system into the game. There's a reason why project zomboid is an alpha game besides the money. It allows for constant changes to be made on implemented things not working 100%.

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If I had a car it would be a case of "oh no, a horde...pffft lol". Jump into car, slam on accelarator and laugh at the shamblers as they vanish into the horizon behind me.

Then drive halfway to West Point and run out of gas... Or hit a zombie/tree/bear :D while trying to speed away, or not get the car running etc. As you said it depends on how they're implemented, but I don't see how balancing a system has anything to do with adding a system into the game. There's a reason why project zomboid is an alpha game besides the money. It allows for constant changes to be made on implemented things not working 100%.

 

... or reach the end of the road with another horde, and now you have one horde in front, one chasing behind you, and because of noise every other zombie in vicinity moving to your location.

 

BTW someone mentioned horses?

horse-hamburger.jpg

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but I don't see how balancing a system has anything to do with adding a system into the game. 

 

Well quite simply, new features can be over/underpowered when stitched onto the sides of what is already there.

 

Lets say, hypothetically, the Devs Introduced a means of making a fresh new Fireaxe from scratch.

It's a new feature, but it causes imbalance since Firexaes were always considered a finite luxuary.

 

Lets say, again hypothetically, the Devs introuced Fast Travel. You could now travel between West Point and Muldraugh so long as you're not "in combat". It's a new feature but it entirely batters the spine of Project Zomboid and changes how it is played. 

 

Adding new features really can break the balance of the game and trying to change already established core gameplay to compensate for an overpowered or imbalanced new feature seems like bad idea to me.

Unless it is something fundamental, then new features should be tweaked to fit the system, rather than the system overturned to compensate for the new feature.

 

But this is just my own thoughts on it. I've been reading other people's and as always, I'm always listening and ready to change my mind. :)

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Ah, ok I think I see where you're coming from. The thing imo is that the reasons why eg. fast travel won't be in, but cars will is the difference that the other simply skips gameplay and is a sort of fast forward button whereas vehicles will add a different style of gameplay altogether and not substract anything. It's not so much the balance imo.

 

Of course there needs to be balance on the feature that is added. With your fireaxe idea it would be bad balancing and not a bad feature that would be added if the axe would be craftable by let's say two wooden sticks and three cobblestone ;). But it would perfectly well work if there was a profession that new how to do it and a sufficient amount of work, skill, materials etc.

 

In the case of cars, it would make sense to have them very low on gas, make gas a rarity and an item needed for multiple things, make car crashes fatal/injuring etc. If you have a big SUV that can ram a zombie or two and you go on a driving rampage you're going to notice how quickly those things eat gas, not to talk about trucks where the gas tank holds usually 120-200 liters (of diesel to add, which most cars don't use) and is exhausted in 3-5 days of moderate driving. You're not going to find those amounts just lying around. A small canister holds usually 5-10 liters and hauling/finding 20-40 of those to get a weeks worth of driving is quite a good balance imo.

 

Those numbers come from my experience in driving trucks for 5 years.

 

EDIT:

 It's a long road from alpha to finished product.

Pun intended right? :D

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That being said, i do know how to make field expedient diesel irl... Destroys the engine after 50 to 100 miles but it will get you out of town. Just need some used fryer oil and some household chemicals...

Ah, ok I think I see where you're coming from. The thing imo is that the reasons why eg. fast travel won't be in, but cars will is the difference that the other simply skips gameplay and is a sort of fast forward button whereas vehicles will add a different style of gameplay altogether and not substract anything. It's not so much the balance imo.

Of course there needs to be balance on the feature that is added. With your fireaxe idea it would be bad balancing and not a bad feature that would be added if the axe would be craftable by let's say two wooden sticks and three cobblestone ;). But it would perfectly well work if there was a profession that new how to do it and a sufficient amount of work, skill, materials etc.

In the case of cars, it would make sense to have them very low on gas, make gas a rarity and an item needed for multiple things, make car crashes fatal/injuring etc. If you have a big SUV that can ram a zombie or two and you go on a driving rampage you're going to notice how quickly those things eat gas, not to talk about trucks where the gas tank holds usually 120-200 liters (of diesel to add, which most cars don't use) and is exhausted in 3-5 days of moderate driving. You're not going to find those amounts just lying around. A small canister holds usually 5-10 liters and hauling/finding 20-40 of those to get a weeks worth of driving is quite a good balance imo.

Those numbers come from my experience in driving trucks for 5 years.

EDIT:

It's a long road from alpha to finished product.

Pun intended right? :D
Lol, actually it wasn't, but now i wish it was.
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I agree with what you've said Suomiboi. Good example of how the new feature ought to carry the rebalance.

 

However, it all falls down to just how realistic Indie Stone want to make the vehicles and this is what I'm waiting to hear. It's all fine and well us saying our favourite isometric zombie survival game is going to follow all of real life's laws and rules. Like having to go to the bathroom or taking care of personal hygiene, or needing some kind of utensil when cooking on a fire or being able to fit six baseball bats in a school bag or......

 

Can you see where I'm going with this? :)

 

Sometimes when it comes to games and films, the suspension of disbelief is required to make an enjoyable experience. Indie Stone understand that from what I can see. For all we know, Indie Stone might allow a small 2-door car to send hordes of Zombies splashing over the roof like it's hit an undead hydroplane!

We really don't know just how realistic Vehicles are planned to be or what's involved in their assembly. Whether fuel type matters, whether you need 108 tools to fix a car or just 2, whether or not hitting a zombie breaks your Chevy. Until this is all confirmed I remain... Pleasantly cautious?  :D

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Pleasantly cautious?  :D

As everyone else, I think. What most ppl are so enthusiastic is that there are going to be cars in the game to fill the worlds and make it resemble what we expect from "the end of the world" - definitely not "everyone took his car and belongings and you're the sole loser who was left behind ;-)". If their implementation would lead much to be desired, that's when modding community will come forth and change that.

As for the trip being easy - have you walked that highway? Now image some random cars spread out on the road or crashed with each other. Now imagine manoeuvring around them and zombies as well. I think the safest vehicle they can introduce and would be out of harm's way would be draisine, yup.

 

(of diesel to add, which most cars don't use)

I had few cars and all of them drank diesel, not petrol ;-)

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We really don't know just how realistic Vehicles are planned to be or what's involved in their assembly. Whether fuel type matters, whether you need 108 tools to fix a car or just 2, whether or not hitting a zombie breaks your Chevy. Until this is all confirmed I remain... Pleasantly cautious?  :D

Good way to put it ! ...after all, in devs we trust. ;-D

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I like the idea of cars and I think they should be common but I just think there should be obstacles in place to stop them from easy to repair or use.

If you have to work to obtain something you appreciate it more. I certainly feel that's a lesson I'd learnt from the DayZ mod.

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If you are going for realism, you are going to have to introduce vehicles at some point - including driveable vehicles.  It's simply not realistic to think that every vehicle everywhere would be completely out of gas or broken down immediately following an apocalypse.  Besides, if the map is going to get much larger at all then vehicle travel becomes increasingly important.

 

At the same time you can balance the benefit with the realistic hazards.  Disabled vehicles in the roadway, for one.  You can also track vehicle durability and have it drop every time you hit anything (including a human body - you'd be very surprised at the damage a body can do to a car, even a very large and sturdy car).  You could also simulate damage to a vehicle from driving it offroad - the overwhelming majority of vehicles just aren't designed to run on anything but pavement.  You could even track vehicle deterioration over time if you wanted to get detailed enough.  Finally you would certainly want to include some hazard to the occupant should you have a big enough collision - some way of modeling damage to the driver.

 

All of this said...yeah, I can't imagine this is nearly as important as other things that can be added to the game.  So as long as development is ongoing I don't think it would be appropriate to say 'no vehicles ever' - but I can certainly see where they might keep getting pushed to the bottom of a list of more useful and important things and never getting added because development time will eventually stop.

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If I had a car it would be a case of "oh no, a horde...pffft lol". Jump into car, slam on accelarator and laugh at the shamblers as they vanish into the horizon behind me.

Then drive halfway to West Point and run out of gas... Or hit a zombie/tree/bear :D while trying to speed away, or not get the car running etc. As you said it depends on how they're implemented, but I don't see how balancing a system has anything to do with adding a system into the game. There's a reason why project zomboid is an alpha game besides the money. It allows for constant changes to be made on implemented things not working 100%.

 

... or reach the end of the road with another horde, and now you have one horde in front, one chasing behind you, and because of noise every other zombie in vicinity moving to your location.

 

BTW someone mentioned horses?

horse-hamburger.jpg

 

as a European, we have actually been eating horse meat unknowingly the last couple years when we thought we were eating mince 

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as a European, we have actually been eating horse meat unknowingly the last couple years when we thought we were eating mince 

 

What sort of animal is this mince? Never heard of it.

 

Mincing is a food preparation technique in which food ingredients are finely divided into uniform pieces. Minced food is in smaller pieces than diced or chopped foods, and is often prepared with a chef's knife or food processor.

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as a European, we have actually been eating horse meat unknowingly the last couple years when we thought we were eating mince 

I know (live in that rainy-windy-weirdass-island as you mate ;-) ) - that's why when horses were mentioned, the first thing that popped into my mind was that.

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