Lifeline: the good, the bad... and the ugly.

[Devlin]

Nice DLC, love it in general, great athmosphere. Rucks in trucks. Brilliant. But a few minor things that continue me from playing:

1) Keeping the threat level in Lifeline low (use the option in command center), go on a mission and suddenly its from 1 up to level 3 in 1 or maybe 2 minutes. Friggin' bad, since that mission you were on is waaaaaay on the other end of the city. You'll have to drop everything and rush back. Left the base on its own once, thinking 8 soldiers and some refugees can do without me for once. No. Friggin mess afterwards - rescued dead. I like the idea of sieges, but the only way to prevent damage to your base and people is: be home, have a grenade launcher ready. Fire away. And repair fences. Yup....

2) Missions. Great to do them, but can we stop the rush rush rush? I can be only at one place at the time! It's a BIG map! There isn't hardly time to gather supplies or roam and recon the city (which I love to do), before someone needs help, some siege is popping up, some woman is on the radio. Also, I'd like to clean out infestations in my neighbourhood - hopefully to stop sieges, but hell, who's got the time to do it?

3) Some areas cannot be temporarely cleaned of zombies. Found a warehouse with good stuff, killed all the zombies around, but hey, kill 5 and 8 more appear. Endless. You just leave without anything after wrecking two cars.

4) Latrine duty. Seriously? I've build it! There are people around to do work and use their brain. Still, people get sick from a dirty latrine?!?! I have to manage it? Seriously?

5) Sieges: only one soldier at every gate is doing something. Rest just stands around waiting to be overrun. Yes, every sieges kills someone you've just rescued. And yes, I've laid mines (incl. the ones you place by hand), got the explosive barrels, etc.etc.

6) You can't request people to join you from the journal. Try finding someone at your base, if you're unlucky or its night, you'll have to run around to find people. Only option is to switch character and find the previous character where you left it. If you're lucky. And whats up with the partners that accompany you that suddenly leave for no reason?

Lost the major today. Ferral hunt. Killed all zombies just to have the ferral. Two vs one, you see? Noooo, once he got triggered, some 8 zombies appear around us. Both instantly overun. Press C Press C. Hammering C but two bites and the major is dead. Loved that character. Really. She was great. No undo, so previous savegame. I've had it. Pressed Esc. Quit game.

Fixes: self managing base, avoid sieges, pro-active team members, hand out tasks to other soldiers (go and do that mission). And most of all: more time to do things.

[BlackAlpha]

That's basically why Lifeline sucks and why Breakdown is so much better.

[Defiled_Popsicle]

Lifeline is designed to be punishing. The whole thing is a race against time to rescue all the survivors in the city and then deal with sasquatches ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the tunnel before you loose all of your playable characters to a seige. Its set up in such a way that your going to loose a lot of people before the final mission. You can use the Ops Center to look for soldiers to help replenish your character pool after the seiges. But your going to loose most of the characters by the final mission.

Breakdown is basically an infinite mode like Dead Risings unlockable sandbox mode but it has progression elements that you can work through to unlock more characters. Instead of just wandering around waiting to starve to death.

Lifeline isnt a sandbox. Its got a lot of scripted events that require you to rescue people in rapid succession with the city growing more and more dangerous by the day making it harder to keep people. With each passing day the seiges become more frequent eventually grinding your character pool down to nothing while you play tiddly winks with sasquatch.

[lefiath]

If it's designed that way, then it's a bad design. Why have open world game at all, when the game constantly annoys you with something and doesn't let you breathe for few minutes? There is always something, always someone needs help and you can't scavenge at all, because it'll bite you in the ass later.

Most of these problems aren't even design related, bad AI (problems with getting into cars, defending themselves, shooting, etc.), impractical mechanisms (many, many things I've encountered) and annoying paste of the DLC (always something happening, and I have to do it all, because everyone else is braindead) makes this a terrible addition to otherwise good game. Don't try to excuse it because "it's made to be hard", game can be hard and player still can feel like he's not being cheated. Also, randomly flipping vehicles when you touch sidewalk.

[nobrien]

Originally posted by lefiath | CZ:

If it's designed that way, then it's a bad design. Why have open world game at all, when the game constantly annoys you with something and doesn't let you breathe for few minutes? There is always something, always someone needs help and you can't scavenge at all, because it'll bite you in the ass later.

Most of these problems aren't even design related, bad AI (problems with getting into cars, defending themselves, shooting, etc.), impractical mechanisms (many, many things I've encountered) and annoying paste of the DLC (always something happening, and I have to do it all, because everyone else is braindead) makes this a terrible addition to otherwise good game. Don't try to excuse it because "it's made to be hard", game can be hard and player still can feel like he's not being cheated. Also, randomly flipping vehicles when you touch sidewalk.

Your trying to play it like BD and its not, you dont need to scav much at all you get supplies nearly all the time, your tasked with trying to survive in a fubar situation for aslong as poss and rescue certain key ppl, While deciding which missions to try and take on all while being on the back foot against overwhleming numbers that get worse and worse.

Granted the idle bug and a few others in the AI department need to be adressed i have stopped playing LL because of those 2 issiues and they are working on what triggers active available NPCs to stop responding and untill they do i wont bother trying again.

But alot of ppl are approaching the game from the wrong direction, its not about building its about survival.

[MadShock]

On my first Attempt i made the same mistakes evryone probbaly has done. It rly isnt Breakdown. I Didnt care much about Artillery Bases. Couldnt scavenge enough so i was most of the time without Influence. Constatntly drivin for a useless mission to the other side of the town. Of course this couldnt end well. Lost Hawkes and Kilo because this stupid Siege started when i was up in the north at the End of the Map.

My second Profile ist almost perfect now. Nobody died so far - have 12 ppl in my Base including Sas. More then enough Influence cause i scavenged hughe parts of the map allrdy. But youre right - the AI is soo terrible. Almost shooting nothing during Sieges, watching me killing hundreds of Zeds alone.

Edit: I have done most of the Sacvenging before ive done the Supply Mission with Kilo at the Beginning and didnt rescue the dr. ex wife until i ve done it.

[CantStopTheComf]

What OP said. Also, every VIP hides in an infestation spot. And while you are almost getting killed by respawning zombies the AI is just standing around doing nothing.

Lilfeline is no fun ATM

[^Reddl]

i bought it two days ago. now i m on my 2. playthrough and i can go on helo to end the game. i lost only 1 person just because i didnt know she will die if i make it not in time. i lost 0 soldiers.

playing with mouse & keyboard makes the life way easier.

[Stean]

totaly agreed . this dlc is garbage - stupid AI , no time for loot , zombies that go through the walls and car when you want to ram them... i got rage quited from the this dlc today and dont want play it anymore before they fix it, original state of decay and breakdown a way better than lifeline...

[Halifax789]

this game has so much potential, but in general puts out missions so fast it makes it un-fun. Would much prefer lesser more difficult missions than difficulty based on not keeping up with inane stupid missions. Close to deleting this game.