[B42] Wilderness survival playstyle

[Dylock]

So you want to go caveman style? Or maybe you think, well the woods are quiet, lets start there. Go off-grid, build a base of operations, get the day to day sorted, defenses up and prepare to take back the world. It makes sense and to me seemed like a fun way to take on the apocalypse.

But you can't. This is not the game for that. I wanted it to be, I thought it was. But so many core concepts of this game simply don't allign with the outdoor survival playstyle (I'll explain in a bit). It makes me think maybe support for it should be removed all together. That doesn't mean removing all aspects like fishing, crops or husbandry. It means building the game around a certain playstyle (or set of playstyles) and making those mechanics support that playstyle.

TLDR; Some core concepts just dont allign with off-the-grid/wilderness/creating playstyle. Mainly:
- Looting vs Creating stuff
- Dependency on towns/houses
- Skill / time progression
- Threat management

Looting vs Creating stuff

The looting playstyle (as i see it one of its core concepts) is at odds with the playstyle of creating. You cannot have both. If you want to support a playstyle based on mobility, living house to house, day to day, you need to give the player the possiblility of finding everything. But you can only give someone something once. They either have to make it or find it. Both is difficult because it will likely end up at different values. (time, risk, effort, etc) Inevitably making one way superior over the other.
Take blacksmithing for example, by the time you get to make a nail (or 4) you will have advanced so far you most likely already looted a hardware store just for the prerequisits of that same nail. So now you *could* make a nail, or.... go to said hardware store and just pickup 3-4 boxes of 100 nails each.... The make-value of the nail is so much lower than the loot-value of the nail theres really no point.
This goes for a lot of items in the game, they are avaiable for the looting-playstyle (as they should) but because of that they are nearly impossible to balance in a creating-playstyle.

Dependency on civilisation

This game is built around its infected civilisation, everything you need, at some point it was someones stuff. Now it's yours and like in your previous life you're still dependent on it. You don't go into town for trinkets and luxuries like salt&pepper (although also), you go into town because you need to. For your basics, a frying pan, pot, tarp, nails, you name it. Sure some things are replacable with wilderness items but their cost-benefits are far worse than the equivalent town items. Want to go forraging for mushrooms? For the love of your free saturday afternoon, just grab a pack of cans. (and foraging I think is one of the better implementations and after levelling felt like it matters, you just need to forget there's a supermarket full of the stuff just minutes away)
Its something I think could be mitigated but ultimately stays at odds with the main way of playing.

Skill & time progression

This is a big one. To progress you need to train/grind do a lot of tedious stuff to make you achieve something. Fine. I played Wurm Unlimited, trust me, there's nothing more grind than that. And its ' bonusses'? You're well fed (pizza), have spells and items to help you, now you're learning at +10%...
Here we have books, books that multiply your gains by a factor of 3. That's huge. Know where you won't find any books? (although enough wood to make your own)
So you go back to civilisation (because no one in their right mind is going to grind an outdoor survival skill someone else could do 3 times as fast indoors because he has a book). And you go looting (you know that core concept of this game). It takes forever because although you wanted to set up camp off grid you're now back to get books. Which are in book stores and post offices, which are where many Z's are, which you need weapons for (you loot them), its not near your camp so you work on your mechanics (& electronics), get a car because you wanted to make your own water and food so you need to travel a lot. (you 're not going to loot, you make your own remember). Now ofcourse you were allways going to give mercy to those Z's. Just, priorities were, camp, sustain, train, prepare, make the world a better place, not go in woefully unprepared because what you need is gated behind clearing zombies.
But you do, patiently, step by step, find a crowbar, a cleaver (good thing you're a lumberjack). And ofcourse, you find the books you need (or think you need, this game is roughly 75% wikipedia/reddit but thats another subject). You now have what you need to learn to survive in the wilderness, also, you found everything you need to never have to set foot in the wilderness again nor a need to learn the skills you set out to prepare for.
Congratulations, despite your efforts to play this game caveman style you're about to roll into camp like tony stark.

Threat management

The whole point of having a base in the woods is to be safe. But you don't need defenses, no walls or choke points. A little cabin is fine but you're not going to see another zombie for months, they wont wander in or migrate in hordes (atleast not in my camp). The thrill of crouching down in a trailer park hoping you wont attract more that 2 Z's at a time, boarding up the windows? You won't get that in the woods. Now ofcourse that wont happen in the woods. This is not a tower defense-game (its not they are millions) but thats my point. Its not a siege game. Securing your hideout in the woods is useless and thus takes that part away from that playstyle.
The threat to your survival, which I think is so well done in this game, just isnt there. So now its just the sims in the woods.

So.... dont live in the wilderness, and for the love of pete, charcoal isn't something you 'exchange' for wood. It burns... slowly... while you're off doing other stuff. I don't want to feel like i'm playing a (terrible) UI.

I'm still hoping his game will get to a point where outdoors/survival is more than just looting towns. But I also realize that the core of this game just isn' t based on that playstyle and incorporating it into PZ is a gigantic endeavor that might just not weight up against the cost it will bring in both development and detriment to the current playerbase.

[Zaidah]

I would say it's a matter of context, mainly : scenario/sandbox settings, and also the state of the world for multiplayer (when it will arrive).

I agree with you that with the default Apocalypse settings, focusing on looting early game is simply way better to get what you need, and it makes sense in my opinion. Electricity and water are still there so you can find fresh food and water in every houses. You'll find useful items (saw, pan, pots...) way faster in the city than with foraging, let alone crafting. Apocalypse even has an option that increases the chances of empty (already looted) houses as the time pass. In this situation, starting and living in the wilderness won't allow you to progress like you would by looting. However, a worth it thing to do is to gather the useful tools that you will later need to build a base and survive in the wilderness, so the process is reversed : looting in the first place so you can more easily settle away from the city.

Now, if you try the 6 monthes later scenario, that's a different story. Cities are overrun by zombies, food is spoiled, and loot in general is very scarce. Foraging will at least be required for food, but you'll most likely need it to craft basic weapons/tools. Cities expedition will still be useful (for instance, to dismantle some stuff to get nails and wood), but will be very risky so you might have no choice but to slowly develop by yourself away from the horde.

For skill progression, there is book yes, but you never know which one you'll find so it's better to focus on your character's traits depending of what you want (worth mentioning that you can actually find skills books and magazine from foraging, but it's obviously very rare). Going for an Apocalypse gamemode and focus on looting ? Take traits that increase your weapons skills and strenght/fitness. Trying the 6 month later scenario ? You'd better have some foraging and crafting skills.

As you said, you won't find many zombies in the woods, that's the point of living away from cities. As you also pointed out, you'll also struggle to find some basic but necessary items if you don't loot at least a few places (Cities expeditions would still be a goal for people anyway, might get a bit boring otherwise. The efficiency "ratio" between looting and wilderness survival highly depends of the world settings (or whether a multiplayer world just started or is already a few in-game monthes in). Sandbox settings will allow you to tailor it if you find that one playstyle is too strong compared to others.

One last note about the crafting in general : the devs mentioned a while ago that the whole crafting expansion (at least for advanced/high level crafting) is a lategame goal and could be mostly ignored by people that simply want to survive from looting (and farming).

[DrLamp]

You're jumping the gun a bit.

Alot of this (everything really) is still work in progress. Absolutely the game isn't ready for primitive start "naked and afraid" beginnings. The devs had been very up front about this. They have also stated that it is something that they are eager to get into the game and are actively working on fleshing it out. It's plain to see that they have been putting in alot of work as the recent patch notes have been enormous. It's also nice that many of the crafting gaps are getting filled in. I pick holes into the game until the sun sets, but I'm probably not going to bring up something that TIS isn't already aware of at this point.

[Dylock]

Originally posted by Zaidah:

I would say it's a matter of context, mainly : scenario/sandbox settings, and also the state of the world for multiplayer (when it will arrive).

I agree with you that with the default Apocalypse settings, focusing on looting early game is simply way better to get what you need, and it makes sense in my opinion. Electricity and water are still there so you can find fresh food and water in every houses. You'll find useful items (saw, pan, pots...) way faster in the city than with foraging, let alone crafting. Apocalypse even has an option that increases the chances of empty (already looted) houses as the time pass. In this situation, starting and living in the wilderness won't allow you to progress like you would by looting. However, a worth it thing to do is to gather the useful tools that you will later need to build a base and survive in the wilderness, so the process is reversed : looting in the first place so you can more easily settle away from the city.

Now, if you try the 6 monthes later scenario, that's a different story. Cities are overrun by zombies, food is spoiled, and loot in general is very scarce. Foraging will at least be required for food, but you'll most likely need it to craft basic weapons/tools. Cities expedition will still be useful (for instance, to dismantle some stuff to get nails and wood), but will be very risky so you might have no choice but to slowly develop by yourself away from the horde.

For skill progression, there is book yes, but you never know which one you'll find so it's better to focus on your character's traits depending of what you want (worth mentioning that you can actually find skills books and magazine from foraging, but it's obviously very rare). Going for an Apocalypse gamemode and focus on looting ? Take traits that increase your weapons skills and strenght/fitness. Trying the 6 month later scenario ? You'd better have some foraging and crafting skills.

As you said, you won't find many zombies in the woods, that's the point of living away from cities. As you also pointed out, you'll also struggle to find some basic but necessary items if you don't loot at least a few places (Cities expeditions would still be a goal for people anyway, might get a bit boring otherwise. The efficiency "ratio" between looting and wilderness survival highly depends of the world settings (or whether a multiplayer world just started or is already a few in-game monthes in). Sandbox settings will allow you to tailor it if you find that one playstyle is too strong compared to others.

One last note about the crafting in general : the devs mentioned a while ago that the whole crafting expansion (at least for advanced/high level crafting) is a lategame goal and could be mostly ignored by people that simply want to survive from looting (and farming).

I guess it makes sense in that context, like you said when not at day 0 or MP. I just feel that levelling without books seems like an unfavorable way of training when there are books to be had. I would even argue that maybe certain skills, like wilderness oriented survival skills would fare better without the presence of books. Knowing you can't find a book for it disconnects it from the looting playstyle. And leveling (XP requirements or otherwise) could be adjusted for the lack of books or replaced by something else entirely.

I do enjoy the connection between off-the-grid living and having to go into the city for supplies. I just want it to be less mandatory to start surviving. Completely surviving without going to towns or seeing zombies would take away what is probably the best aspect of this game, I agree.

[Dylock]

Originally posted by DrLamp:

You're jumping the gun a bit.

Alot of this (everything really) is still work in progress. Absolutely the game isn't ready for primitive start "naked and afraid" beginnings. The devs had been very up front about this. They have also stated that it is something that they are eager to get into the game and are actively working on fleshing it out. It's plain to see that they have been putting in alot of work as the recent patch notes have been enormous. It's also nice that many of the crafting gaps are getting filled in. I pick holes into the game until the sun sets, but I'm probably not going to bring up something that TIS isn't already aware of at this point.

I realize there's still quite a bit of progress to make. It's been 11 years since I bought this game and every couple of years I want to try it again. I was unlucky to revisit it just as a major update was released (or not released). So there's this, many things to come-vibe.

It's also why I tried to stay clear of minor issues like muscle-strain (which I actually don't mind, I think it add a bit of, oh sh*t its getting late, im worn out can't go back through this whole lot of zombies hack 'n slashing, gotta get out another way kinda adrenaline)
Things like that can be balanced, tweaked fairly easily. Same goes for the UI, its attrocious, but workable and easily fixed if they wanted to. And I'm sure many things are already on TIS' radar like you said.

Rather, my issues are with some of the more fundamental challenges incorporating different visions into a single game. If done properly it could be amazing, but it can also bring development to a crawl and leave you with a storm of conflicting ideas and implementations as you try to accomodate for all the playstyles. As I see it its not a lack of content (as you pointed out, theres much going on and a lot still to come) or even lack of commitment or effort. But the increase in complexity and conflicts that holds the most risk.

I'm not saying this because im sour about it (i am but thats on me), but I decided to set up camp near the golf court south of riverside next to the river leading from the golf court down south. There is this smaller river left of the big one, it goes pretty far south. Now zombies can't swim, so setting of camp there gave the advantage of having 3 sides covered. I walled off the space between the 2 'rivers' gaining a massive piece of secure land... but while building that wall I realised.....im defending... against nothing... this is not a game that takes place in the wilderness. The problem im trying to illustrate is not my own falacy for building there (i still kinda like it with the dirt road leading to it) its that with the support for this wilderness aspects comes a whole new set of challenges. Like me as a player finding myself more inclined to go back to town because it was rather dull out there in the wild. So even though I could survive there, there was seemingly no point to it. Ofcourse as Zaidah pointed out different challenges/scenario's will alleviate some of the discrepancy. But I still felt like i was playing the game the way it just wasnt meant to be. Thats something I think needs adressing if you want to expand on this playstyle.

I think TIS needs to think about this journey, the WHY of crafting, building and outdoor survival more than about the HOW.

[derLoko]

Originally posted by Dylock:

I think TIS needs to think about this journey, the WHY of crafting, building and outdoor survival more than about the HOW.

I'm afraid TIS is simultaneously working on 3 games right now:

1) zombie apocalypse simulator
2) post-apoc wilderness crafting game
3) Rimworld-style colony management with NPCs

Sure, sounds cool - but can we please just have a solid step 1 before TIS gets carried away with overambitous goals for 2) and 3)? Because I'm afraid PZ will just be a giant mess of half-baked ideas in the end.

Unpopular opinion(?): I'd be perfectly fine with paying another 20$ each for steps 2 & 3 as DLC - as long as we get solid content instead of excuses.

[Dylock]

I guess thats pretty much sums up my concerns. Dividing attention like that might end up hurting gameplay more than adding to it.

There are already many mechanics that have no reason to them. Like I can build a house (somewhat), fences, gardens en paddocks which all take many many hours... Or just drive to a premade cabin-mansion with fising dock, gardens, animal pens and surrounding fence... Building as a part of fortifying an existing house makes sense. There's a reason to it. Building as a standalone gameplay seems useless to me.

I think it is an unpolular opinion, but it is one I'd share if I felt I would get a full game without having to wait another 11 years.

[Anna]

I don't know what you're talking about. I played the "Leaving the Home Naked with a Bottle of Water" game, and now I'm playing the "Building the Farm in the Woods with Looting" game. They're both great—far better than the library simulator we had in .41 multiplayer. Despite the systems being utterly unpolished.

You essentially repeat about 30 times that it's a game about looting. I get it—you want a game about looting—but this isn't it. It's a game about a zombie apocalypse, and in zombie survival universes, it's more or less standard for society to loot first and switch to production later. That's exactly what they do.