Is there anything to do in this game?

[Haruspex]

I'm thinking of buying this game to play solo or co-op but it seems like there's nothing to do in terms of progression?
I'm basing my information on ambiguousamphibian's youtube video but it seems like the only interesting part are the early game but once you're set up it seems like he just grinds levels infinitely.
I noticed that there's a helicopter event but is there any more event?
What's the goal of end game like?

[Kaldrak]

Plenty of stuff to do and explore, but once you've watched all of the tv shows and listened to all the radio broadcasts, that's about it for the plot, if that's what you're asking.

It's just a survival simulator, so your end goal is to survive as long as you can. You have to make your own goals from there.

[Where's The Lamb Sauce]

Not much of a story or quests given to you if thats what you mean. You have to set your own goals and its basically just seeing how long you can survive in a zombie infested world before dying. Atm I believe its just the helicopter event

[Ficelle]

It is a game about surviving in a zombie apocalypse...simulation like
This is the goal...survive
Depending on settings, can range from trivial to impossible


Now, it is true that once you are set with everything, there isnt much more to do...with no real reason to confront zombies anymore
But again, depending on settings, reaching this point will range from trivial to impossible / very long...
And you are never guaranted to not fail....and it can happen at any time


As for grinding skills, this is only for idiots
You can kill any zombie Day 1 unarmed with 0 everywhere
Obviously, to kill the same zombie monthes later, you dont need more than 0 in all skills
You will want to raise some skills a bit, it helps...
But grinding ? nope, only lemmings do that

[Ashley]

I wouldn't bother grinding character isn't permanent. Unless you manage to constantly back it up and considering literally messing up once in this game can mean unavoidable death. You could grind for hours, then instant proceed to make a bad call and get infected and be done.

The game is a make your own zombie game experience. There's definitely a few people with thousands of hours in this game. Every run is different and you could be blessed or cursed for the run. And considering one scratch can mean death it'll take plenty of time to see this game to it's endgame if you want to see what playing around with max everything is like

[Snefu]

As much as I like AA I wouldnt say his gameplay is normal per say.... Maybe the escape the island is a good example of setting a goal (for example setting a goal of getting off the island, maybe build off of it to make it back with more supplies?) But yeah the real end game of zomboid is what do I eat today and how fly is my character lol. You will die alot so actually surviving along time as a new player is rougher than it looks, PlanetAgol has some really fun mods to change the world its self to make certain play styles viable! But at the end of the day it has the same goal as Minecraft, survive and have fun! and dont feel bad if its not your cup of tea my man, plotless games are not for everyone and thats super okay too !

[Eekhoorn]

Surviving is hard enough as it is and will take up your time more than you think. If you do get bored or unmotivated later on, you can always dip you toes in the workshop.

There's a mod that allows you to find and create a vaccine. Now, that's a cool end goal. Or you could add realistic helicopter events to spice things up a little. Or maybe you wan't to repair the emergency broadcast system? Mods got you covered.

This game is all about surviving and does that really really well. If you do like the genre, you can't permit yourself to not play this PZ. It's simply the best survival game out there.

[Mlembrant]

You can build bases, you can get some car, gas, supplies and travel far away.. maps are all connected. It's really big. You can also fail at any moment, even with equipment, you get infected or sick from rotting corpses around you.. so you have to deal with that too. One little mistake can take you to your grave.. You can also enjoy how everything deteriorates and decays.. there are other things, like random gunshots or alarms.. that will guarantee some fun skullcrush festival :)

[Dreaming Prince]

i kinda found it to have the same issues as otehr survival games. its hard and interesting at first, but once you have your base set up with a farm and etc most of the challange is gone you either sit there forever or go out and tempt death for no reason, or im my case, just play something else

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Dreaming Prince:

i kinda found it to have the same issues as otehr survival games. its hard and interesting at first, but once you have your base set up with a farm and etc most of the challange is gone you either sit there forever or go out and tempt death for no reason, or im my case, just play something else

Enable to have the heli event sometimes...that will change things terrible.
Also constructing a non existant road is allways fun!

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Ficelle:

It is a game about surviving in a zombie apocalypse...simulation like
This is the goal...survive
Depending on settings, can range from trivial to impossible


Now, it is true that once you are set with everything, there isnt much more to do...with no real reason to confront zombies anymore
But again, depending on settings, reaching this point will range from trivial to impossible / very long...
And you are never guaranted to not fail....and it can happen at any time


As for grinding skills, this is only for idiots
You can kill any zombie Day 1 unarmed with 0 everywhere
Obviously, to kill the same zombie monthes later, you dont need more than 0 in all skills
You will want to raise some skills a bit, it helps...
But grinding ? nope, only lemmings do that

So watching an AA video is pretty much what I should expect with the game?
I don't know I'm just looking for a bit more content on things to do and people pretty much the end goal is to just survive...which is kind of...bare bones to me. You can say the same thing for every survival game out there that the end goal is to survive but for comparison's sake.

Let's take a look at factorio, The early stage and end stage gameplay is entirely different.
Same for Minecraft sure it's easy to survive but there's things to keep you preoccupied to making farms and whatnot when you finished the game. Sky's the limit in that game.
Now I'm not saying these games are 100% comparable.

Is there things to keep me preoccupied in late game? Seems like early and end gameplay is basically the same but with a few QOL improvements.

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Dreaming Prince:

i kinda found it to have the same issues as otehr survival games. its hard and interesting at first, but once you have your base set up with a farm and etc most of the challange is gone you either sit there forever or go out and tempt death for no reason, or im my case, just play something else

I heavily disagree. If my idea about this game is true that what you do at the beginning of the game is the same for the end then I disagree.
Let's say 7 days to die.
Surviving is the same idea but there's a lot of things to keep you preoccupied as a player throughout the stages of the game.
If you're into building that can last stronger hordes then that scales really well throughout end game. Leveling and Questing is the same with more rewards and unlockables in your skill tree. Even make a helicopter to fly around the map with.
Of course if you're done with the game then you're done with the game but I think 7 days to die has more things to do in PZ at least from what I've seen from YT.

Not one in the comment section has yet to elaborate on things that I could do in the game lol

[Ficelle]

First, you have to reach endgame...
In this game, surviving is not dying once
Contrary to most games nowadays, there is actually a "game over"

Most other survivals are 'fake' survivals
You die, you continue playing as if nothing happened...perhaps with a small loss of XP or some non consequence thingy
An immortal pretending to survive...


In PZ, If you are good enough to reach endgame often...there are enough settings to make the game harder and make sure you wont...no matter how skilled you are

Reaching endgame with Pop 1 or Pop 10+ is not the same...at all
Reaching endgame in Extremelly Rare loot settings or every house is a free supermarket is not the same
Reaching endgame with runners...well, good luck on that lol
Reaching endgame with a min maxed character or a cripple is not the same
...etc...etc
And you can mix all these of course...

No matter how good you are, there are enough settings to challenge you or renew the game experience
And even in easy settings, you can die at any time provided you didnt disabled infection...


Now, if you need quests or specific goals..well...this is a sandbox
There is none of that

Sure,, once you are set with everything...you are set
Endgame is somewhat the weak part of the game...like most survivals anyway
Then again, if you reach endgame often enough, it is time to raise the difficulty or tweak some settings

Plus, there are mods, MP , and of course the missing game content to come (NPCs mostly)

[Anoteros]

lol after 10 years still no npcs...

[Sam]

Originally posted by Myla:

Not one in the comment section has yet to elaborate on things that I could do in the game lol

Not die. I recently came back to this after playing 7d2d and definitely not action-oriented like that and you can fail in self-surviving unlike in that because you can't dig up mats to craft near-infinite amounts of ammo. Everything powerful in very finite and you'll end up outmatched if you go against zombies on default settings. That's why I play with heavily modified settings to even the playground in the long run.

But no, you can't fly around and have an action fest every 7 days, there isn't anything like that in this. In 7d2d I shoot everything for XP. Here better to avoid the action if possible. More survival, less action. Not even my taste but that's the main difference. And without respawning loot enabled, it ends up with inevitable farming.

[Kaldrak]

Originally posted by Myla:

Not one in the comment section has yet to elaborate on things that I could do in the game lol

Okay.

1, kill zombies.
2. sneak around large hordes you can't kill easily
3. drink bleach (die)
4. get bitten or scratched by zombies (die)
5. get dragged down and eaten by zombies
6. reanimate
7. create new character in same world and hunt down your old self as a zombie
8. collect seeds and start a garden
9. pick up and move all the furniture to block the entrances and exits of a building
10. rip up the floorboards
11. Watch/listen to the apocalypse on the TV/radio
12. do the CDDA challenge (good luck!)
13. gorge yourself on ice cream
14. get depressed from hiding inside for too long
15. head out into the woods and live as a wild man
16. chop down all of the trees and build your own place
17. starve to death/die of thirst
18. forage for berries and eventually mushrooms
19. one randomly selected type of berries/mushrooms are poisoned each run. play russian roulette with your food!
20. find a car
21. run over zombies till your car breaks
22. smash car into a tree and get horribly injured
23. find a shotgun!
24. fire shotgun at zombies (dinner bell, ding ding ding!)
25. run out of ammo and run away or die from all the zeds that come crashing down on you for stupidly firing a gun
26. take over a house and pretend it's Night of the Living Dead and board up all the windows and doors with planks you've gained by dismantling the furniture
27. escape from your house (or die) as you remember how that movie ends when some other house alarm goes off nearby and brings the whole neighborhood down on you
28. go to the mall (hahahahahah)
29. visit the prison (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA)
30. raid houses for supplies and collect food/water/ammo/clothes
31. you're carrying too much now and can't outrun the zeds anymore. drop your stuff and run or die
32. the power/water has been shut off. hope you made a water collector or stocked up on water beforehand at least
33. attempt to combine ingredients in the dark arts of cooking
34. get rained on and develop a cold and sneeze constantly so everything nearby hears you until you find enough food to get rid of it or die
35. search the world for a needle or saw or blowtorch or whatever the vile god of rng has decided not to give you in your run that you desperately need/want
36. read books
37. walk on broken glass with no shoes (fun!)
38. deliberately set off an emergency vehicle siren to draw all zombies in a wide, wide area towards it
39. become solid snake by sneaking nearby the giant horde it draws
40. eat worms (yum!)
41. burn down the neighborhood/forest with molotovs
42. try sandbox mode and custom design your own apocalypse!
43. steadily add mod after mod for additional content to make the game more fun
44. try player made mods with new challenge maps and areas to explore
45. Alright, this is the most important thing you can do in Project Zomboid. Are you ready?






Play the damn game for yourself and find stuff that's fun to do, lmao.