Tired of Devs Playing it safe

[ConnieCooks22]

If you played long enough you would know Project Zomboid is a lonely game. And a game that can lose interest after your first couple in game weeks. The reason why? Lack of goals. Your goal is to survive and that is broad. But the basics is tools, storage, a base, a car, food and power. But the the thing about the game is that your goal is boring.

One solution I saw was remove zombie respawn, kill all the zombies in a town to make it safe. Well when you do that there is no threat left, unless you choose insanely rare loot spawns then you're just searching 99% of the game.

But know you have no zombie threat and minimal food so what do you do? You guessed it! either get bored and make a new save or move to another town and do it again.

You could explore the world but
1. its a big map
2. whats the in game benefit other then if its a military base to wipe towns easier
3. its lonely.

Why have your character live if they are the only survivor of the airborne virus? Whats the purpose?

I guess Im annoyed at the devs holding off on the npcs. The game feels understandably dead but with a "natural" virus killing and reanimating corpse it brings a new world, new rules, and competition. 4,500,000 million people live in Kentucky and there's 1 survivor? that's a 0.02% of the population. Which means that there is higher chance of there being at least 2 people surviving.

My point is this game isn't supposed to be lonely and I know you can play on servers. But as a singleplayer game a initial infection scenario should have fires, scavengers, survivors, eventually bandits in the months to come. Can you imagine ignoring a npc after crossing paths after some time to have them at some point, break and rob the player and other npcs or seeing the in game scenarios like the birthday party, and the suicide pact and the runaway prisoners, or even the friday the 13th story. you could see all of these possibly during or before the outbreak full unveils itself.

But who am I? A guy who wants this game to stop ♥♥♥♥♥footing around and make a change with confidence, instead of them peaking around the corner with "news updates" on ideas like basements. Thats cool but people want life in their zombie game and real long time goals.

Endgame is to survive. There needs to be a new endgame cause surviving without a purpose isn't surviving at all. And the game gets boring.

[Shurenai]

Okay, Let me just ask a simple question here:
Do you want dumb-as-bricks SuperbSurvivors style NPCs that are at best about as intelligent as a toddler and at worst as dumb as a sack of bricks

Or do you want actual good NPCs?

Because the former is actually the dev's own code from an earlier version, revamped a bit to keep it working on newer versions of the game and with some minor adds by the mod developer. The devs decided that those sack of brick NPCs were a terrible showing and removed it until they could do it right.

Doing it right takes a lot more work, they're basically overhauling every aspect of the engine from the bottom up and rebuilding many things to make good NPCs possible. And doing that big of an overhaul takes time.

If you're happy with the former, The dumb as bricks NPCs, Just add the mod to your save- Like I said, It was the devs own code in the first place. That's your 'The devs didn't play it safe' and it's what we got.

Edit: And can you honestly tell me you think it wouldn't look bad on the company to just shove totally unfinished garbage out the door to sate the impatient? That if the devs pushed out something like the original NPCs and just left it in the game all this time people wouldn't be reaming them over the awful state of NPCs?

[Puppers]

Originally posted by Yackityyack22:

I guess Im annoyed at the devs holding off on the npcs.

Theyre working on them but it just going to be a while because other mechanics need to be implemented. It would be pretty weird to add them before the crafting overhaul and animals.

[Radiosity]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Edit: And can you honestly tell me you think it wouldn't look bad on the company to just shove totally unfinished garbage out the door to sate the impatient? That if the devs pushed out something like the original NPCs and just left it in the game all this time people wouldn't be reaming them over the awful state of NPCs?

Remember when the devs received an offer from a publisher that would've injected a load of cash... but the string attached to said deal was that they had to release the game in a relatively short time frame which would have resulted in a much inferior product?

The fact they didn't take the deal, despite it being easy money, tells me all I need to know about them. I'd rather wait a while and have the good product instead of rushed garbage that we get from basically all AAA companies.

[b1gf001]

At this point, the only thing worthwhile is to troll these posts. They add no value to anything. They effect nothing. There is no reasoning with them. Logic does not apply. Troll them.

[DrLamp]

Originally posted by Yackityyack22:

If you played long enough you would know Project Zomboid is a lonely game. And a game that can lose interest after your first couple in game weeks. The reason why? Lack of goals. Your goal is to survive and that is broad. But the basics is tools, storage, a base, a car, food and power. But the the thing about the game is that your goal is boring.

One solution I saw was remove zombie respawn, kill all the zombies in a town to make it safe. Well when you do that there is no threat left, unless you choose insanely rare loot spawns then you're just searching 99% of the game.

But know you have no zombie threat and minimal food so what do you do? You guessed it! either get bored and make a new save or move to another town and do it again.

You could explore the world but
1. its a big map
2. whats the in game benefit other then if its a military base to wipe towns easier
3. its lonely.

Why have your character live if they are the only survivor of the airborne virus? Whats the purpose?

I guess Im annoyed at the devs holding off on the npcs. The game feels understandably dead but with a "natural" virus killing and reanimating corpse it brings a new world, new rules, and competition. 4,500,000 million people live in Kentucky and there's 1 survivor? that's a 0.02% of the population. Which means that there is higher chance of there being at least 2 people surviving.

My point is this game isn't supposed to be lonely and I know you can play on servers. But as a singleplayer game a initial infection scenario should have fires, scavengers, survivors, eventually bandits in the months to come. Can you imagine ignoring a npc after crossing paths after some time to have them at some point, break and rob the player and other npcs or seeing the in game scenarios like the birthday party, and the suicide pact and the runaway prisoners, or even the friday the 13th story. you could see all of these possibly during or before the outbreak full unveils itself.

But who am I? A guy who wants this game to stop ♥♥♥♥♥footing around and make a change with confidence, instead of them peaking around the corner with "news updates" on ideas like basements. Thats cool but people want life in their zombie game and real long time goals.

Endgame is to survive. There needs to be a new endgame cause surviving without a purpose isn't surviving at all. And the game gets boring.

Pretty much all of this is WHY a zombie apocalypse is so terrifying.
I mean you hit the nail on the head. Once you've eked out a stable/safe living...well to what end? To just sit and slowly wait for death to take you? You're it. No one left. That's the real horror of being the sole survivor of any apocalyptic event.

You say the game isn't supposed to be lonely...I disagree wholeheartedly.

However at the end of the day, it IS a game and games are meant to be played. The Indie Stone IS making progress to greatly expand the end game to address the issues you talk about. However a game can grow and change too fast. This can alienate large parts of the playerbase or make the game feel like it's losing it's identity. There's also the fact that the team is not very large. This stuff takes time to do and the developers are being very open about what they're working on. It's about all we can reasonably ask for.

[Coolranch]

People played Minecraft nonstop without getting bored long before they implemented their notoriously awful NPC system, which provided nothing more than randomly moving husks to exchange items. The 'end game' was quickly slapped on and outside of speedrunners, most players don't even care about it.

'Playing it safe' is the only smart thing to do when you're attempting to add NPCs to what is effectively a sandbox experience. I would rather have no NPCs than bad ones.

[BananaGrabber]

What is your indication that they are playing it safe? When you compare your knowledge of the development of this video game to your own experience working on projects, what red flags stood out to you in order to make you feel this way?

[xKilroyx]

Though Npc's would be nice eventually. I am personally in no rush. I enjoy the solitude of this game as my life is full of constant noise pollution and craziness at times. I look forward to my late night PZ sessions...sole survivor man that sounds nice lol.

[wfawn999]

I love PZ and it became my favorite game to play over 5000 hours ago. I've pretty much stopped playing my other games. When it was announced that the game was going to have NPC's, eventually, my main concern was whether it would be something I could turn off in the sandbox. I personally don't care about NPC's and would rather not have them in my gameplay. I like being the soul survivor. The zombies are enough in regards to interaction.

However, I do agree that there are a lot of things already in the game that need improving upon. It was a long wait from ver. 39 to ver. 40 and then ver. 41. Now it seems there's going to be a really long time until ver. 42. At this time, I don't really care about the animals and a new crafting system when the content we currently have could be so much better. I don't like to complain and whine about what we "don't" have. I think people would be much more patient if we got little improvements along the way. I can remember from 40 to 41 we would get small content updates fairly often while we waited for 41. A new animation, a new piece of clothing, something improved upon or added to a skill set, just something added to the game that we could focus on. I know very little about development, game engines, software, etc. I'm sure some things are very time sensitive and take a lot more labor to produce, add, update, whatever. But I'm sure we could get some of the things that are already in the game improved upon. Give me a new jacket, change up on the interior design of some houses, would love to see some hair on my mannequins, anything that I can explore and utilize while I wait patiently for ver. 42.

This is not a "put down" of the game or griping about the development team. It is an observation of a game that I love dearly. I appreciate that this game was not abandoned after one or two years, like so many other game I use to play. We just need something to carry us over while we patiently wait for ver. 42.

[ˢᵈˣ FatCat]

stop hoping NPC is real or will realize in this game, the idea was i think 2014 ago, and guess what 2023 is still a long dream.
gonna accept the dev got they wanted. money. they just gonna use a tiny tiny fraction of their time develop while chilling on them mansion while drinking expensive wine
it's a joke....
...
ish.

[LIMP BISQUICK]

Originally posted by Lich:

The lack of npc really shows and we are waiting for it but the devs want to take their sweeet time to add them so they can profit with more game sells? Idk why it's taking so much time like really. Here is a video talking about all that situation:

eh I understand people like OP getting agitated over the wait, most of us want it real bad. I don't think it's fair to jump to conclusions like that when there's more examples that prove otherwise.

They're doing a lot of overhauling, along with content. I do think people underestimate or take for granted the MP side of things. We all have have different wants and ideas on what should be prioritized. At the end of the day it's their baby. Whatever keeps them inspired to improve the game after all this time. It's just going to take time.. To tell you the truth I don't think it goes much beyond that.

[Legion]

Gotta love backseat developers.

[NoxMortus]

Ahh yes...the classic rage posts of someone who does not understand a single element of game design or business acumen.

[Metalhead123]

The game needs more events. You get to a point where you become self sustained. There is only really 3 events that take place. The Electric shutting down, The water shutting down and the Helicopter. It needs some random horde attacks every 5 days or something, where the zeds will zero in on your base and test your defences. This would make scavenging for more ammo more meaningful.

I like to try some of the map mods on the workshop. Some of them are really good Raven Creek is really good for a big city like feel. The Forest is great it changes the whole way you play the game. You will forage for food and live off the land for a great Wilderness survival experience. These maps are great if you like exploring.

[Machiavelli]

Caveman update is more important