Cars are currently too reliable and powerful

[[AKn] Talsar]

I know I'm not the first person to say this but thought it was worth having its own thread to see how many agree or disagree. I'm enjoying the game at the moment but my biggest issue is I find that when things turn bad running to a car is a foolproof strategy for the following reasons:

>cars are EVERYWHERE and there is no restriction on their usage
>it is incredibly easy to run over zombies
>it is difficult for zombies to damage a car or its driver/passangers

Therefore I would suggest making cars a less powerful and reliable element of the gameplay. Here are some suggestions as to how this could be done:

>cars have a random chance of being locked- require unlocking by breaking a window before they can be gotten into - this MAY trigger an alarm which alerts zombies in a wide radius

>some cars require hot-wiring before they can be driven around in, which takes time (possibly also a chance of faliure without a specific character skill?)

>fuel is limited, with cars having a random amount of fuel when you get in them, and being refillable from your home base using the barrels of fuel resource

>collisions with zombies slow down and damage the car significantly, so that running over hordes becomes a risky buisness.

>zombies should be able to much more easily tear off doors/smash windows etc. and get at the juicy survivors inside the car. also having zombies clinging to the side of your car should seriously affect handling and increase the chance of crashing

>crashing a car should do more damage than it does currently, so that a serious crash will put a car out of action

I feel that implementing some or all of these are necessary to balance this element of the game (there may be other ways to achieve this that I haven't thought of)

[SalsaTheOne]

Definitely something to consider. Either some or all of the solutions here.

[Byookay]

I kind of wish cars burned fuel, would make it feel more real. If you didn't have enough before a long trip, you'd run out in the middle of nowhere, have to barricade yourself for the night until daylight to scavenge for fuel or a new vehicle so you can get home.

That's assuming that night time was dangerous though... lol

[Nine]

These are fantastic suggestions that have crossed my mind once or twice as well. I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.

[astrea_anerada]

Originally posted by AKn Tenva:

>cars are EVERYWHERE and there is no restriction on their usage
>it is incredibly easy to run over zombies
>it is difficult for zombies to damage a car or its driver/passangers

Umm, not sure that I agree 100% with your points ^_^

1st, even though that there are many cars around in the area, you will use all of them after a few days and a lot of crashes.

2nd, even if it is easy to run over zombies, it seems that you haven't run over a few couples of zombie hordes and having your car destroyed because of them or running over an acided zombie not only damaging your car but also damaging you too or trying to run over a "Big Un" zombie (yeah I remember the name at last ^_^) not only damaging your car but it slow you down and having other zombies in the area jumping on your car doing more damage to the car/you/passanger or trying to hit that "monkey" style zombie (don't know the name of it, sorry) who jumps around the area avoiding your car and you getting damage the car on rocks or electric poles and/or houses.

and

3rd, wait until you get a few zombies jumping on your car and when you try to hit them on items in order to kill them you get your car destroyed and if the zombies manage to damage the car by pooling the passanger's door, you loose trust points (or how it called) if in case you have a passanger with you as also loosing trust points if the passanger get pulled out of the car by the zombie.

Yup, all the above 3 occassions happened to me. Not sure if I am too unlucky or not but I think that the developers have done a good research on these types of matters.

But just to tell you these, because I like doing a lot of area research (I have found secret camping sites with loot items that way ^_^) and to scavange I had a lot of troubles with zombies and as my characters were leveling when I was killing them, so was the difficulty level rised.

Anyway, I am apologies for talking to much, this is my opinion for the game ^_^'

[PaulB]

I agree with this one. Wanted to make a thread about this but you was first.

[Lynx]

I just think cars should degrade quicker from damage or at least make it a possibility that cars could take critical damage somewhat more random. Having fuel be an issue is also a good idea.

[Mr. Christmas]

Okay you know what? Let's tackle your points one by one:

1) "cars are EVERYWHERE and there is no restriction on their usage" - Just like they would be 15 days after a REAL zombie meltdown.

2) "it is incredibly easy to run over zombies" - Zombies are just people. They're not walking blocks of lead. You know what's really easy to run over a lot of in a car if you want to? That's right, people. Sure your windshield will break pretty quick, but you could do it so long you'd get bored before the car got damaged enough to be inoperable.

which of course leads into:

3) "it is difficult for zombies to damage a car or its driver/passangers" - Go outside and start punching/kicking a car. Even if you have no pain sensation, you'll have broken bloody stumps before you do anything other than trivial cosmetic damage.

As far as I am concerned, cars are too WEAK for me to maintain suspension of disbelief.

4) "cars have a random chance of being locked- require unlocking by breaking a window before they can be gotten into - this MAY trigger an alarm which alerts zombies in a wide radius" Agreed.

5) "some cars require hot-wiring before they can be driven around in, which takes time (possibly also a chance of faliure without a specific character skill?)" Hotwiring a car is child's play. Once you learn how, it takes less than 30 seconds to do, and the only way you could possibly fail is if you somehow stab yourself in the eyeball with your screwdriver. It's not worth programming in as anything but an alternate "start the car" animation.

6) "fuel is limited, with cars having a random amount of fuel when you get in them, and being refillable from your home base using the barrels of fuel resource " - The distances you drive cars in this game, you would be driving for weeks before you ever had to bother with a fillup, even with a horrible gas-guzzling ancient v-8 pickup.

7) "collisions with zombies slow down and damage the car significantly, so that running over hordes becomes a risky buisness." - See point 2.

8) "zombies should be able to much more easily tear off doors/smash windows etc. and get at the juicy survivors inside the car. also having zombies clinging to the side of your car should seriously affect handling and increase the chance of crashing " - why? As above, I challenge you, personally, to go try and rip a car door off or smash a window with your bare fists. A person clinging onto your car would change the handling no more than a person sitting calmly inside your car. THAT'S NOT HOW PHYSICS WORKS.

9) "crashing a car should do more damage than it does currently, so that a serious crash will put a car out of action" it seems about right to me. Almost any accident a car can be driven away from, you just don;t want to because doing so leads to more expensive repairs down the road.

In conclusion, I think it's obvious that you're unfamiliar with cars beyond watching them on TV. The only thing wrong with them is the hilarious lack of weight to them. When you brake hard your front end spacks the road, for pete's sake.

Automobiles are not fragile things that explode just because some minor thing goes wrong. Aside form the rpesence of zombies, this game keeps failry close to realism. Your suggestions for "balance" would destory that... plus the balance is fine as it is. Zombies are never the real threat in these forms of fiction, they are simply the consequence you pay for human failures and lapses in judgement.

If this happened in the real world, you'd have rednecks putting on deer bars, rounding zombies up, and holding smash-ups. A little radiator protection and you're good to go practically indefinitely. They're just human bodies, after all.

[[AKn] Talsar]

Originally posted by astrea_anerada:

Originally posted by AKn Tenva:

>cars are EVERYWHERE and there is no restriction on their usage
>it is incredibly easy to run over zombies
>it is difficult for zombies to damage a car or its driver/passangers

Umm, not sure that I agree 100% with your points ^_^

1st, even though that there are many cars around in the area, you will use all of them after a few days and a lot of crashes.

2nd, even if it is easy to run over zombies, it seems that you haven't run over a few couples of zombie hordes and having your car destroyed because of them or running over an acided zombie not only damaging your car but also damaging you too or trying to run over a "Big Un" zombie (yeah I remember the name at last ^_^) not only damaging your car but it slow you down and having other zombies in the area jumping on your car doing more damage to the car/you/passanger or trying to hit that "monkey" style zombie (don't know the name of it, sorry) who jumps around the area avoiding your car and you getting damage the car on rocks or electric poles and/or houses.

and

3rd, wait until you get a few zombies jumping on your car and when you try to hit them on items in order to kill them you get your car destroyed and if the zombies manage to damage the car by pooling the passanger's door, you loose trust points (or how it called) if in case you have a passanger with you as also loosing trust points if the passanger get pulled out of the car by the zombie.

Yup, all the above 3 occassions happened to me. Not sure if I am too unlucky or not but I think that the developers have done a good research on these types of matters.

But just to tell you these, because I like doing a lot of area research (I have found secret camping sites with loot items that way ^_^) and to scavange I had a lot of troubles with zombies and as my characters were leveling when I was killing them, so was the difficulty level rised.

Anyway, I am apologies for talking to much, this is my opinion for the game ^_^'

In response to your points:

>I haven't completed the game yet and running out of cars has crossed my mind. However, from the size of the map and the number of cars I'm using (plus the ability to repair them) I find it very unlikely that I will run out of cars before running out of every other resource available.

>I have sucessfully run over far more than 2 zombie hordes and numerous individual zombies in the same car before it finally decides to set on fire. Yes there is damage from running over zombies but the fact that you can splatter a good 50+ zombies before the car sets on fire makes it an incredibly powerful weapon. As for special types of zombies I have not yet had the cause or opportunity to run any of these over.

>It is cool when zombies jump on the car and rip the doors off. However this happens very infrequently when the car is going at speed, and when it does happen its often fairly easy to shake them off. I think I've seen 1 occasion so far where a passanger got pulled out of a car. That is why I suggest that the car should slow down when impacting zombies so that if not done carefully the car and its occupants become swarmed by sheer numbers and get literally torn apart.

Right now I just really feel cars seem at odds with the terrifying 'one wrong move and you're zombie food' style of the gameplay on foot. Its almost like having invulnerability and super speed pickups that last for 10 minutes liberally scattered about the place!

[Zekvich]

I like this post though I do think the list is a bit extensive. One or two gimmicks added to cars would do the job enough like a fuel meter and car alarms to attract hordes though I don't think much, if anything will change in this game content wise I do think your ideas would make a really nice sequel as I really find the cars to be a bit dull once you realise you can exploit them if you choose to.

[SwatKat1-Sukshinder ShindaHMC]

Messing with the cars is not good,let them be bullet proof if it helps.Don/t turn this game intro Mario 2d...

[Novamonk]

A lot of good points, and interesting ideas you put forward. Could help add some fun stressful events running around trying to find a car.

The devs did talk about the following point one of their gameplay streams:



>fuel is limited, with cars having a random amount of fuel when you get in them, and being refillable from your home base using the barrels of fuel resource




I think originally they did have a similar setup in place. One of the reasons fuel is one of the main resources you can scavenge. The problem came up during testing that when a car ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere it became really irritating and boring trying to either find fuel, another car, or run back home. So they ended up dropping that aspect.

Granted that no barrier for modding the game to be different :)

[[AKn] Talsar]

Town Park Radio, you make some valid points. However I am coming at this purely from an angle that I feel would make the game more challenging and enjoyable. I personally fail to see why the game should embrace realism and physics at the expense of this. For example, you say fuel would never run out over the short distances travelled, this is very true, but then we are talking about a game here that allows you to grow crops on a daily basis. You feel that humans are incapable of tearing off a car door, but then here we are talking about zombies that already seem to have superhuman strength, and cars that EXPLODE when they take too much damage.

Anyway I guess it totally depends on how much you're willing to sacrifice realism for a challenging experience. Your points are all valid though! Also its a bit worrying that you assume I'm unfamiliar with cars besides watching them on TV. The UK isn't just some giant rural village where we all ride about on horses and carts all day (just thought I'd make that clear!)

[[AKn] Talsar]

Novamonk, I thought it must have at least been considered from the presence of fuel as a resource. Can't believe they dropped it! It should at least have remained in there as an option! I LOVE the idea of having to carry a jerry can halfway across the map to get my favourite truck back up and running, its up there with permadeath for reasons to play a game! =p...just me then?

[astrea_anerada]

@[AKn] Tenva, your response on my points are accepted ^_^

Anyway, the good thing is that at least there a lot of cars left around the area to use in order to use them to take from one city to another without become "zombie food" as you said (I like that explanation XD ).

I won't be suprised when people start making mods, to see some tanks or/and army vechicles to use, hehehe ^_^

[Mr. Christmas]

Originally posted by AKn Tenva:

I personally fail to see why the game should embrace realism and physics

Because the game tries so very hard to embrace realism and physics in every other element... why stop at cars just because they're your arbitrary "fun line"? It's about immersion, not making it CoD:Zombies. The designers have been clear about this from the beginning. For example, fuel: even making fuel a FACTOR broke immersion because they constantly had it running out in testing, causing people to quite rightly point out that everything else was based in reality, why did a gallon of gas seem to only take you half a mile? Once they started extending it closer to realistic amounts, they realized it wasn;t even worth simulating at all because it literally takes you hours and hours and hours of nonstop driving to require a fillup.

Sometihng you never do in this game.

the designers have been very clear about this: no arbitrary breaks in reality just to make the game "more difficult". It's not that kind of game. If you want that game, fort Zombie is over yonder that-a-way, and Infestation: Survivor Stories is the other way. Have fun.

You'll be back.