Info on NPCs?

[Barudar]

I know most players are waiting for this, personally I told myself years ago I'm not going to play again until friendly NPCs come, but I really want to sink my teeth into this game. Have the devs given any news about when NPCs will be here? I think everyone knows it'll be a game changer!

P.S. to devs.. lots of people watch the steam news feed for updates, you are kinda hiding all your progress from people! I thought you guys stopped working on the game when I looked at the news feed :P Just figured you guys should know

[Radiosity]

Once B41 is finished, animals and hunting are next for B42. Then more complex NPCs after that. In other words, a long while yet.

[falloutgod13]

They've been working on ripped up clothing or some other dumb crap. Basically anything other than NPCs for like 6 years now. Cyberpunk is out, a new POTUS is about to be in, which means this game is fixing to have been in development during 3 different presidential administrations. NPCs? HAH... maybe when pigs fly.... seriously, they're probably going to add flying pigs before friendly npcs because animal AI is apparently on the agenda... So yeah, I imagine maybe about decade or two from now when our kids have their own kids we might get some NPCs....

[Barudar]

Yikes.

[Equil]

Yeah, Cyberpunk is out, and it's a broken, buggy unoptimised mess(Atleast for a good chunk of people, and the state of it on consoles is basically unplayable). People complain about stuff taking too long to come out, then complain that it's buggy and broken when it's pushed out undercooked.

I'd rather them take a long time and do it right instead of them pushing it out asap and breaking the game.

[nasKo]

We're detailing the road ahead after build 41 is out. The work on NPCs will be implemented in phases after build 41 is finally kicked out the door.
The pinned topic is still current in that regard and links to explanations why we don't mention NPCs anymore until they're closer to release.

We're currently gearing up to put the finishing touches on the new Multiplayer architecture that's integral to getting build 41 out to the stable branch.
A small portion of the team is tasked with providing mainly bugfixes and adding very minor features to the game, specifically to keep progress ongoing while other parts of the team work on other things. People like to ignore or dismiss our countless explanations of not everyone on the team being able to work on the same thing.

The News section will be updated when Build 41 is out or maybe when we're calling out for an extended public MP test. We'll see. We decided to stop updating the news section on Steam because people complained about news of the beta branch showing up on their feed every week or even just monthly.

[Barudar]

Thank you for the response! I think whoever is in charge really should have gone for npcs sooner though :P

[nasKo]

The pinned topic lines out why that would not have good approach :P

[Lorenzo_BR]

Here's the direct link to the long explanation from the pinned post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/520518053449950851/#c520518053450165555

[The Gat]

I'm not sure if I'm "allowed" to say this, since it was shared publicly on the game's discord server, but ehhh...

It was mentioned by a moderator on the server that you can expect them to work similarly to how Sims live on the Sims 3 specifically, with their "story progression" mechanic or however it was called, since some of the devs worked on mods to improve said mechanic.

[Khorne Flakes]

Originally posted by Poloski:

I'm not sure if I'm "allowed" to say this, since it was shared publicly on the game's discord server, but ehhh...

It was mentioned by a moderator on the server that you can expect them to work similarly to how Sims live on the Sims 3 specifically, with their "story progression" mechanic or however it was called, since some of the devs worked on mods to improve said mechanic.

Yeah even based on articles from 2013 it's been confirmed the AI will operate similarly to Sims' story progression.
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2013/01/tales-from-the-metaverse/
I am curious though how they'll adapt to an ever-changing and violent environment that is PZ. In the Sims 3 everyone has a set home with a job, unlimited food and entertainment.
In PZ survivors will have to find(or grow) their own food and water, combat boredom and depression, on top of that trying to fend off hordes of zombies and opposing survivors; all of this wrapped around relationships that can result in a number of outcomes(friendship, love, jealousy, hatred and murder etc). I can't think of any other game which has aimed so high for it's AI, so I am a bit skeptical if this will be the final outcome.

Either way, I'm just excited we're going to get animals after build 41 hits stable!

[Telfram]

Yeahh, another week, another thread on NPC's, lets just ignore the pinned topics again.

[Barudar]

@Telfram I'm oh so sorry for not checking every inch of the internet before asking a question that is very easily answered by much of the community.

Must be nice for these guys to be able to kick back and add whatever simple updates they feel like adding while dangling a carrot in front of everyone's face. I love the kind of game they are going for but damn, I stopped playing years ago to wait for NPCs and it's still not even remotely close to testing? And in that time waiting, after I came back all I've really noticed are slightly better graphics and the crouch/sprint mechanic... I'm surprised someone else hasn't already come in and finished a decent rip off of this. These devs are getting lucky they're floating this long, that's for sure.

[Gilga ™ |Yonaguni|]

Originally posted by Barudar:

@Telfram I'm oh so sorry for not checking every inch of the internet before asking a question that is very easily answered by much of the community.

Must be nice for these guys to be able to kick back and add whatever simple updates they feel like adding while dangling a carrot in front of everyone's face. I love the kind of game they are going for but damn, I stopped playing years ago to wait for NPCs and it's still not even remotely close to testing? And in that time waiting, after I came back all I've really noticed are slightly better graphics and the crouch/sprint mechanic... I'm surprised someone else hasn't already come in and finished a decent rip off of this. These devs are getting lucky they're floating this long, that's for sure.

So just another rant, the devs are slow, no NPC`s etc. Don`t want to wait until an EA game is finished, maybe don`t buy EA games.

And yes we have this kind of threads 3-5 times every week, when all the answers are already pinned.

[ุ]

Perhaps the fact that these threads happen so often should be taken as a sign of what should actually be focused on? As opposed to spending a year on simple animations that alot of people dont care about when compared with npcs and multiplayer

[falloutgod13]

Originally posted by ุ:

Perhaps the fact that these threads happen so often should be taken as a sign of what should actually be focused on? As opposed to spending a year on simple animations that alot of people dont care about when compared with npcs and multiplayer

You'd think, but they have their own autistic way of doing things and got mad at people for bringing up the feature they most desired.