Iron Man ... BITES!!

[Grouchy_Old_Man]

For those of you who haven't heard the term before, "Iron Man" refers to a particular type of Save Game feature. The game will only save upon exit. This means you can't save the game at a safe point, try something new and stupid resulting in your falling flat on your face. You cannot then restart from your saved safe point, having now learned your lesson. Instead, you are stuck with either starting a new character or a whole new game. All that time you spent building experience and knowledge? Absolutely EFF'ing wasted!!

"Purists" rant and rave that this is the only way to properly play a game and all else is laziness and cheating. Well EFF you, I say! I can rant, too. I do NOT enjoy continually repeating the grind of building experience and knowledge just to get to a new level or obstacle and immediately die. Then I have to toil through the same EFF'ing, BORING grind to get to where I was before.

Personally, I think the Game Dev's are hiding behind the "purist" facade. I think it's easier to program. I think they're lazy. I think they're moronic pinheads living in their parents basements, who have never faced real life issues. I think they don't care about wasting the time of their players. I think they don't give a rat's a#$ about the anger and frustration we players feel when we discover this "little" structural flaw in their game. Because by the time this flaw becomes apparent, it's too late to get a refund!!

Well, that's my rant. What's yours? Do tell.

EXAMPLE:
My spawn point was great! Food! Weapons! Books galore. I ate, read, slept and grew ready. I looked through the windows into the yard, no Z's. The door wasn't shaking and there were no Z groans or noises. So I opened the door and was immediately killed by an alert Z waiting silently there! Does that bite, or what?

If only I could have saved while standing at the door, I could have reloaded, now knowing that a silent zombie can still be alert. If only.

[JohnRando]

By default, save games are located in :
C:\Users\[yourname]\Zomboid\Saves

You can copy the subfolder corresponding to your game and there you go ; "savegame". Doing this takes away a lot of the pressure this game is based upon, so is not available with a simple click.


If you disagree with the devs artistic choices, backup your save. Maybe rant about how tedious it is to do so.

If you don't...well stop complaining.

[clonegunner237]

The game's tension builds in large part on the fact that you're always just one mistake away from death. It forces you to be constantly careful and alert. If you could simply reload to ten minutes prior, all that tension would go away.

You can mitigate it. The above post explains how to manually save your game. In sandbox settings you can make zombie infection nonlethal, which makes the game a lot more forgiving. You could also turn loot settings up, or enable the starter kit backpack. You can start a new character in the same world should you die, reclaiming your lost base, finding and murdering your old self to get your stuff back.

There are also a few mods in the workshop which enable you to save manually, so you could just download one of those if you really want that functionality.

Nonetheless, the game is a survival game where you aren't meant to live forever. The iron man mode is a core element of the design in that fashion. It's not a flaw, it's a feature which is quite critical -- a lynchpin for the building tension which is a key part of the zomboid experience.

[rav]

theres a bazillion games catered to casuals with infinite respawns and handholding, i dont understand why on the very few games that are rather hardcore, those casuals need to come in and complain that the game is too difficult. i really dont.

personally if i die, i would delete the map and start from 0 because thats how i feel it should be played.

the game already gives a fair middleground by allowing you to play on the same map again and retrieve your old body and base.

this game has no end and the fun and challenge is to survive a bit longer in every run, theres really no point in savescumming your way to infinity since there is no end or victory condition

[shrekstyle]

This is how you died.

Not This is how you save scummed to survive.

Each to their own i guess.

[clonegunner237]

Originally posted by rav:

theres a bazillion games catered to casuals with infinite respawns and handholding, i dont understand why on the very few games that are rather hardcore, those casuals need to come in and complain that the game is too difficult. i really dont.

personally if i die, i would delete the map and start from 0 because thats how i feel it should be played.

the game already gives a fair middleground by allowing you to play on the same map again and retrieve your old body and base.

this game has no end and the fun and challenge is to survive a bit longer in every run, theres really no point in savescumming your way to infinity since there is no end or victory condition

Pretty much this. I play the same way.

If you use saves to ensure that you never die, the game'll give you one playthrough and that's it. You'll start to think you've seen everything. On the contrary, most of the "meat on the bones" is in the earlygame, in the hard decisions and in getting better at surviving with very limited resources.

The early parts of the game isn't a "grind". It is the core of what the game is about. Zomboid is a game about survival, about trying over and over, getting better and making it just that much further each time. It is about risk management, of weighing the value of a place's potential loot against the risk of losing it all. About actually losing it all, and about learning from that mistake to do better in your next playthrough.

[shiftyjim]

I'm with you Grouchy Old Man! Don't pay attention to these white knighters!!! I don't appreciate anyone trying to SELL me how my game play experience is to be had. Anyone going out of their way to tell you they are doing something and how good they are at it is highly sus. Example to illustrate the attitude I'm speaking of: I have these landlords that constantly tell me they are good landlords.... I'm sure you can guess just how 'good' they are at it... This game goes out of its way to PROVE to you just how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ you would be in a zombie apocalypse situation... you know what fine, its your story, give it to me straight bub...
If that's all this game was, Id play with my friends for a couple of hours a year maybe. Luckily, there are means and ways to craft the sandbox to your liking and I DO IT TOO!!!! mwahahahahahaha - suckit purists!!!! /s

I do it because this game isn't just hard, its impossible, they program ♥♥♥♥ on purpose so you will fail. period. You spend 3 hours grinding your skills up only to get auto fecked in some obscenely obvious way and your supposed to feel good about it, because, well, that's reality!! Well, no actually, this is a game, I'm playing to have fun, and I don't like the irritating waste of progression I'm wasting my real life on playing. Some of us play for progression. This is our fun. I get that some of you hate existence and need pain for pleasure, its OK, this game is for you too!

Want to keep me playing? Give me more ways to modify my sandbox - not less. Don't try to sell me YOUR experience, let me have MINE.

[AkimboWasabiMenthol]

this game falls in the same vein as dwarf fortress and oddly enough ss13. You use the experience from this time to teach yourself for next time, to do anything less sorta kills the game and my interest personally. Losing is fun

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by JohnRando:

By default, save games are located in :
C:\Users\[yourname]\Zomboid\Saves

You can copy the subfolder corresponding to your game and there you go ; "savegame". Doing this takes away a lot of the pressure this game is based upon, so is not available with a simple click.

If you disagree with the devs artistic choices, backup your save. Maybe rant about how tedious it is to do so.

If you don't...well stop complaining.

Actually since this option was readily available, i mean to back up your saves, also is encounraged by the developers (you know IWBUMS?), and it takes less than like 3 minutes to look up, i think this is more of a vent, then a rant, or possibly a trolling attempt.

Also there are reasons why folks look around first, open the door not standing in front of it, and all these minor tricks that can save you from such unhappy events.

[Ficelle]

Me i im very glad there are still a fews games around where you need a bit of skils to succeed
Mind you, interesting games are interesting because they dont catter to casuals
A 'game over 'condition is needed to make 'victory' worth something

For casuals, there are 1 million 'autowin from the start' games
You know, all these games without a 'game over' where you can only win or win
Why not playing one of these games instead of trying to ruin this one ????

You will be able to enjoy your 'victory'...a succession of all stars align all the times...and when they dont, no problem, reload, they will align



You open a door not ready for combat ?...and you complain ?
100% your fault...
To open an unknown door in this game...stand as far as possible from the door, in combat stance, facing the door, press E, ready to attack...if there is a zombie, attack...simple as that

You can backup saves anyway...and reload at will to enjoy your...'all stars align all the times victory'

There is Sandbox mode...you can make this game so easy it is impossible to not suceed
You can even remoce zombies...

There are probably some save mods to make your casual experience great

[⚜︎Dmitry Light]

"Iron Man" mode is most stupid thing what gamedev ever developed. Right between battle passes and donate equal win. If player really WANNA one life experience - he will be play like this without any control from game, player just will ignore all manual saving. But for all rest of players, 95% of them, it's really sucks. Need special do something for saves. If someone say "Hey! Maybe your character is dead, but you get cool story" - this is bullsнit, I don't need any story. In Rimworld if you want "Iron Man" - press button, if don't - just don't activate it and play normal and do what ever you wanna. A long time ago, in times of HL1, I and my friends have challnge - how far we can get in the game on one live, without any loads on hard difficulty. For this friendly challnge - we doesn't needed of any stupid ironman modes and e.t.c.

Long story short: Ironman mode is truly sucks.

[AkimboWasabiMenthol]

Originally posted by Ficelle:

Me i im very glad there are still a fews games around where you need a bit of skils to succeed
Mind you, interesting games are interesting because they dont catter to casuals
A 'game over 'condition is needed to make 'victory' worth something

For casuals, there are 1 million 'autowin from the start' games
You know, all these games without a 'game over' where you can only win or win
Why not playing one of these games instead of trying to ruin this one ????

You will be able to enjoy your 'victory'...a succession of all stars align all the times...and when they dont, no problem, reload, they will align



You open a door not ready for combat ?...and you complain ?
100% your fault...
To open an unknown door in this game...stand as far as possible from the door, in combat stance, facing the door, press E, ready to attack...if there is a zombie, attack...simple as that

You can backup saves anyway...and reload at will to enjoy your...'all stars align all the times victory'

There is Sandbox mode...you can make this game so easy it is impossible to not suceed
You can even remoce zombies...

There are probably some save mods to make your casual experience great

I agree, refer to my earlier post here

Originally posted by Wombraider:

this game falls in the same vein as dwarf fortress and oddly enough ss13. You use the experience from this time to teach yourself for next time, to do anything less sorta kills the game and my interest personally. Losing is fun

as to why.

[shiftyjim]

Originally posted by Wombraider:

this game falls in the same vein as dwarf fortress and oddly enough ss13. You use the experience from this time to teach yourself for next time, to do anything less sorta kills the game and my interest personally. Losing is fun

My sentiments exactly!

Again this is why this game is pretty great so far. You can cater to your own learning experience. Personally, I feel like early on its more important to stress repetition balanced against progression. Fundamentally, to me, this is what the base game settings lack, but its really awesome that I can customize against what I know to be unreasonably punishing about the game, so that, if I do play really really smart, I can flourish and build a cool place to retire in apocalypse, which is NOT AT ALL in line with what the game premise seems to be sold as.

Originally posted by clonegunner237:

The early parts of the game isn't a "grind". It is the core of what the game is about. Zomboid is a game about survival, about trying over and over, getting better and making it just that much further each time. It is about risk management, of weighing the value of a place's potential loot against the risk of losing it all. About actually losing it all, and about learning from that mistake to do better in your next playthrough.

I don't understand why anyone needs to play a particular way or be judged. Truly the greatest thing to take from the developers direction in this game is the ease with which I, as a lifetime GAMER ( of many titles - insert snide causal remark here), can manipulate the rules of the sandbox to fit my ideal apocolypse scenario after I get familiar with the base game.

To me: with regard to the part of the game you are talking about: I absolutely recognize that as a part of my decision making. Its part of what we, as all humans do(risk management), some better than others. I tend to focus on other aspects of this particular game at this particular time, since I derive my pleasure from those kinds of choices(risk management) from other gaming titles. The choices in looting in this game are trivial and easy to make, but the interface is clunky, cumbersome, and punishing. Those things detract from my experience, not because they might be inherent limits in the design of the game, but because they tend to exacerbate exceedingly tediously programmed trip-ups. Again, might be minor, but for right now, I'm focused on a different part of the game. Maybe later I'll evolve to play a different style, or else, ill put it down and come back later.

Assuming we all play games the same way is a limited way to look at it. I'm glad you have fun playing 'your way' dude!

[Kaldrak]

Sandbox mode. Customize the game to your preference.

Turn off drag down, turn off infection transmission and mortality. Enjoy yourself.

True iron man mode would be no saving at all. Anyone else play Roguelikes? XD

[njs]

PZ's core theme as a game is the player's own mortality. Stripping that away detracts from the artistic and gameplay purpose of the game. There are some freedoms that developers cannot provide without compromising their vision. You are all free to circumvent that with modding and file management, but I do not believe it should be sanctioned by the developers.

My point has nothing to do with how I believe games "should" be played, to be clear: only with the artistic vision of PZ and the ideas/messages/themes it explores.

[Grouchy_Old_Man]

JohnRando
Useful info, thanx! Okay, so once I find the subfolder under C:\Users\[yourname]\Zomboid\Saves, then what do I do? I didn't understand your reference "savegame"? HOW? Please forgive my computer ignorance. I'm a grouchy old man, I don't know these things!