General balancing, arid squares, penalties and zombie seiges

[Aricane]

I'm not sure I like the idea of just settling on top of houses with enough supplies to celebrate your 40th birthday. I have a few suggestions to raise the difficulty or at least render roof top settlements less appealing. My suggestion in general is to take steps to make player migration more appealing by making settlements less beneficial

 

• Squares become arid when used for farming a couple of times, making them none farmable. If you fence off a safehouse by the ocean, the water should decrease the amount of potential fish catches
• Apply penalty to large stashes of food near players, by making them attract rodents/rats that spoils/eats the food.
• Just like the water and electricity shuts off at some random point in time, a faraway horde should deliberatly be attracted to areas of the map where there is much player traffic. Should unlike water have a large timespan though, so players are not entirely discouraged from building houses.

Maybe I just like it rough, but I can't just stand back and watch people survive a zombie apocalypse. Back in the Camp Neo Haven days we would have survived forever just working together.

[Migoxiss]

Thats actually a good idea. Hope the devs set this on the list for planned features

[Kajin]

Ground can be prevented from becoming arid by rotating crops. If you planted tomatoes last time, this time you might want to plant something else.

[Viceroy]

Yeah it sounds good, NH could indeed survive forever, hell without zombies respawning and repopulating the local area you could have left a baby outside the walls at midnight and it would have been safe.

 

If you do make a permanent base it should at the very least have some challenges of its own, like the rats, like sickness, like attracting hoards, bandits. Stuff like that.

 

Oh and Ari, *siege

[Kajin]

I'd love to see rats and rabbits and deer in the game attacking your food supplies and eating your crops.

[booner352]

I thought they were putting in something like different AI's? Like sadistic AI and options like that. Can't remember...

 

Anyways, why don't you crank up your zombies? Add a few negative traits without adding any positive ones? I mean they have an option for zombies to navigate doorways, excellent hearing, excellent vision, easier transmission, stronger zombies, zombies that have more health.

 

Until you've cranked all these up and survive, I don't think there is room to complain about the difficulty.

[Aricane]

I thought they were putting in something like different AI's? Like sadistic AI and options like that. Can't remember...

 

Anyways, why don't you crank up your zombies? Add a few negative traits without adding any positive ones? I mean they have an option for zombies to navigate doorways, excellent hearing, excellent vision, easier transmission, stronger zombies, zombies that have more health.

 

Until you've cranked all these up and survive, I don't think there is room to complain about the difficulty.

It wasn't really thought as a complaint about difficulty, which I think is perfect as it is. I've noticed that several people build up huge safehouses, clears the perimeter and stays alive there, which kind of undermines the whole zombie threat. I'd like to see that threat again.

[booner352]

 

I thought they were putting in something like different AI's? Like sadistic AI and options like that. Can't remember...

 

Anyways, why don't you crank up your zombies? Add a few negative traits without adding any positive ones? I mean they have an option for zombies to navigate doorways, excellent hearing, excellent vision, easier transmission, stronger zombies, zombies that have more health.

 

Until you've cranked all these up and survive, I don't think there is room to complain about the difficulty.

It wasn't really thought as a complaint about difficulty, which I think is perfect as it is. I've noticed that several people build up huge safehouses, clears the perimeter and stays alive there, which kind of undermines the whole zombie threat. I'd like to see that threat again.

 

 

I say if people want to build a safehouse and play the game by just maintaining it, let them. If you want to kill zombies, go kill zombies! Once things get quiet, run around shooting your pistol into randomness and wait for the horde.

 

I guess I can't get behind an idea that forces people to play one way. If you don't want to be able to farm one spot infinite times, don't. If you don't want to be able fish inside your walls, don't. If you want zombies to be attracted to your place, attract them. That's just my opinion. :cool:

[Realmkeeper]

Until you've cranked all these up and survive, I don't think there is room to complain about the difficulty.

I'm not so sure about that.

There is certainly room, not to complain, but to suggest an increase in difficulty of the vanilla survival settings.

Sure, we can all jump in Sandbox and crank everything up, but to play the game as the developers intend to be the 'Project Zomboid Way' in Survival is, I think, still the ultimate experience. And making that experience a bit of a chore to survive is the very distinction between PZ and every other zombie game out there.

[booner352]

 

Until you've cranked all these up and survive, I don't think there is room to complain about the difficulty.

I'm not so sure about that.

There is certainly room, not to complain, but to suggest an increase in difficulty of the vanilla survival settings.

Sure, we can all jump in Sandbox and crank everything up, but to play the game as the developers intend to be the 'Project Zomboid Way' in Survival is, I think, still the ultimate experience. And making that experience a bit of a chore to survive is the very distinction between PZ and every other zombie game out there.

 

 

I thought the devs wanted it to be the most realistic as possible? The land going bad from planting crops there too many times, is a false statement. As Kajin said, all you need to do is rotate them. The smell of player heavy areas would cause the zombies to smell that. This is going to be implemented with the AI update (not sure of the official name). Fishing one spot won't destroy the fish population. Fish are constantly moving throughout water. Imagine all the people who fish in one spot during fishing season. I've fished a small  stream, that isn't stocked, every weekend during the summer with 2 of my friends and we caught at least 3 fish each, every time.

 

In my opinion, the realism in PZ is what sets it apart from other games. Creating unnecessary difficulties would make it like other zombie games.

[Realmkeeper]

 

 

Until you've cranked all these up and survive, I don't think there is room to complain about the difficulty.

I'm not so sure about that.

There is certainly room, not to complain, but to suggest an increase in difficulty of the vanilla survival settings.

Sure, we can all jump in Sandbox and crank everything up, but to play the game as the developers intend to be the 'Project Zomboid Way' in Survival is, I think, still the ultimate experience. And making that experience a bit of a chore to survive is the very distinction between PZ and every other zombie game out there.

 

 

I thought the devs wanted it to be the most realistic as possible? The land going bad from planting crops there too many times, is a false statement. As Kajin said, all you need to do is rotate them. The smell of player heavy areas would cause the zombies to smell that. This is going to be implemented with the AI update (not sure of the official name). Fishing one spot won't destroy the fish population. Fish are constantly moving throughout water. Imagine all the people who fish in one spot during fishing season. I've fished a small  stream, that isn't stocked, every weekend during the summer with 2 of my friends and we caught at least 3 fish each, every time.

 

In my opinion, the realism in PZ is what sets it apart from other games. Creating unnecessary difficulties would make it like other zombie games.

 

I didn't mean to imply that there should be 'unnecessary difficulties' (as you call them) in the Survival mode, what I meant was very similar to your first sentence/question - making the game [moderately] realistic adds to the chore of survival, and is what makes PZ stand out from the rest of the genre.

 

On a side note though- Taking that realism too far will/would completely ruin the fun and gameish-ness of any video game. The Devs are not aiming for absolute realism, rather for a challenging balance of reality, strict zombie lore, and addictive entertainment. It is for this very reason that several entire subjects have already been straight-out denied will ever be in the game (personal hygiene and toiletries, for one), and the reason many unrealistic things have/will need to be added as well (such as the Sadistic Director).

 

Edit: As an addition to all that, and to address the specific points in your post which didn't seem directed at me but I'll have a crack at them anyway -

Land going bad from crops: Sure, any land will eventually go bad without fertilisation, even crop rotation doesn't stop this, but will certainly prolong the usefulness/fertility of the soil. However with the functionality to create farmable land on rooftops by dumping a bag of fertile soil, should also come the functionality to replace that soil, or dump a fresh bag of soil from elsewhere on top of your over-farmed land.

The smell of player-dense areas: Zombies in PZ likely aren't going to be smelling players from a long ways off in Survival mode any time soon (keeping in tune with the Devs take on Romero/Brooks lore), but with the reintroduction of zombie migrations, as well as the helping hand of the Sadistic Director, we can be certain the Devs will 'flush out the campers' to a certain extent.

Fishing will not deplete stocks: Well, without migration, fishing the same area repeatedly will result in a lower yield. Assuming something similar to how the zombies used to migrate is used alongside animals, then there's still a chance over-fishing would reduce the population - perhaps not so noticeably in a river, but certainly in a lake or other land-locked body of water. Even more so if we take the whole realism too far and literally - once the power is out, toxins and sewerage are likely to spill/creep into waterways affecting the local fauna.

[booner352]

I think the Sadistic Director is very realistic (clyde) (clyde)  <---- That is how I imagine him.

[Aricane]

Hehe

 

Well you're right the realism of the suggestion can be debated. However apply the reversed logic of the arguments to the game would take out many of the features it recently got. For instance the safety system, global chat. Many of the existing features are acceptable now probably because people have gotten use too them. Reversing the argument about cranking up zombies works well to. If people think implementing these suggestions makes the game to difficult, they could just nerf the zombies. The game is already forcing a certain play style. So from my point of view it's not really a discussion about how difficult the game should be or what approaches the game should use to challenge a players isolation from the zombie threat. I think the game originally was intended to be a struggle. Safehouses right now are like a huge buff in a game, that has no counterpart.

 

I'm not under the impression that realism is the main development goal in this game, it's to deal with problems related to a vast zombie threat and how to survive it. What makes PZ very special, I think, is the "This is how you died" approach. Right now that approach is neglected because of the easy achievable roof top safehouses.

 

Edit: On a side note I think PZ really displays the legendary zombie threat very well. Movies depicting the subject doesn't have to account for realism, like out running zombies are zombies spawing outside someones house. Take the 4-5 episode of The Walking Dead series when Rick was stuck in a tank. How can a tank not be a hot topic for remaining survives/soldiers. Zombies are stupid, slow and easy to out smart.

I think PZ show should advocate for the threat of zombies by preventing players to just sit behind a wall and being self-sufficient.

[Kajin]

Land going bad from crops: Sure, any land will eventually go bad without fertilisation, even crop rotation doesn't stop this, but will certainly prolong the usefulness/fertility of the soil. However with the functionality to create farmable land on rooftops by dumping a bag of fertile soil, should also come the functionality to replace that soil, or dump a fresh bag of soil from elsewhere on top of your over-farmed land.

Crop rotation is the fertilization. What some plants take from the soil, others place back into it. Carefully planned crop rotation can keep soil going at a very high quality just about indefinitely. And why would I want to replace soil in the first place? If I'm really desperate for quality plant nutrition I can just find and add manure to the soil. A great deal less effort would be involved if you did this. Digging up the soil to replace it with different soil is backbreaking labor and it's not even the most effective method available.

 

Adding more soil on top of previous soil would be a good idea since it helps to promote good root system development, though.

[booner352]

I'm just going to throw this out there... I didn't think roof farming was a thing in game or in real life. I feel like you need a good amount of soil for the root system to grow properly.

 

On a more serious note, I can't wait for the Sadistic Director. I want it to be as though you have to have a constant watch on your walls to make sure they aren't weakening from zombies attacking them. I want it to be that if you have a safe house, that you have to maintain that safe house from being over run. I want to fall asleep listening to a zombie knocking at my door with it's head.

 

I think that will be what will get most people who sit in houses.

[Aricane]

I'm just going to throw this out there... I didn't think roof farming was a thing in game or in real life. I feel like you need a good amount of soil for the root system to grow properly.

 

On a more serious note, I can't wait for the Sadistic Director. I want it to be as though you have to have a constant watch on your walls to make sure they aren't weakening from zombies attacking them. I want it to be that if you have a safe house, that you have to maintain that safe house from being over run. I want to fall asleep listening to a zombie knocking at my door with it's head.

 

I think that will be what will get most people who sit in houses.

 

Yeah totally agree