After some hours of play, 2022

[Sweets]

So I been playing a lot these path few weeks and I am a returning player who has not played since you added the wild update here are my thoughts and ideals for the game.

FIrst my thoughts : This game has went through major improvements since those early days that have made the game greatly more enjoyable yet there are some issues that I mention later.
The Performance: Has really been worked on but still not there yet, and may not ever be 100% till the dev's give players the ability to make servers on something other than G portal but what they have done to the code has made the game quite playable. I played official so I could see the game in its default state and while on it I would experience rubber banding only when the cap was met and late at night. **The FPS** has also been quite stable but I experience drops during certain sunsets, not a whole lot say about fps but it is smooth for me at least (rtx 3060).

Gameplay: This has also been quite good but I do have some critique that I will save for later.
Crafting has been fun and I enjoy diving into bunkers and slashing down puppets while also in fear of a would be killer sneaking up on me. The mechs are still in game and i like them but I know they are not everyone's favorite and I feel they should be destructible but they are way less lethal than I remember. Building a base slowly and making water collectors is a lot of fun and I really really enjoyed hunting.
There was quite a lack in pve and threat on my official run of the game and I almost thought puppets were instinct at first. They do not spawn a lot and are sometimes extremely scarce I hope the addition of mutants in the future could maybe fix this. Right now puppets are in low quantity and they pose little challenge.

now for some critique

PVP: I like pvp, and when pvp happens in this game it can be heart pounding fun with every step you take being meaningful. The gun-play when it works feels good and the addition of malfunctions and the need to prepare your own mags is really nice and realistic. The animations are so satisfying to watch.
There are death-matches and events for pvp and a hand full of locations players "may" be and this is ...OK.

There is a issue, a big issue, with pvp and that is its sometimes extremely hard to find especially on a official server. The pvp often boils down to 2 things. You either find people camping a safe zone or a police station/bunker which can lead to good pvp but this is rather scarce. The 2nd one is just getting the drop on someone or they getting the drop on you. There is very very little pvp even on a pvp server.

The game greatly lacks push to attract people all to the same location and what locations do attract people you can go long periods of time with just running into 1 single player there. My suggestion to fixing this is a simple one and that can be example on games like "rust" where the devs added things like cargo ships and rare loot crates that can only be open or access at certain times.
**the devs have cargo drops** but i really think adding more world events that set up potential pvp hotspots would be healthy for the pvp community so they have chances to go all out and bring their best gear to a extremely lucrative event. You can have something like a large pvp zone could spawn but everyone on the server can get a 30min heads up of where it will spawn and move to that location and when it starts crates would spawn in buildings and poi's in that grid that normally wouldnt be there and these crates would require tools to open but would have extremely good loot. The kicker would be these zones would be hotspots for pvp giving pvp players content to unload those reserves and have some fun in outside of deathmatches.

LOOT: This is the worst hands down thing about this game for me. There are roughly 2 kinds of servers. servers where there is way to much loot, and servers like officials where there is no loot hardly at all. I know the devs have stated they are planing a sort rework on loot so i wont dive deep into this but WOW LOOTING IS UNFUN. Honestly you could make 99% the current lootable objects unlootable and leave just a few objects that are and that would be better than what you have now
no item found
no item found
NO ITEM FOUND you can raid a entire military base and its surroundings and come out with A BEANIE and a broken heart.
Another annoying thing is the objects that are lootable if they are already looted you would be none the wiser as they do not change their appearance so you would be none the wiser if a place has been looted 15mins before your arrival making your entire raid POINTLESS. I really hope the loot rework fixes this because its so painful trying find loot.

some final critiques would be that items do not stack manually in inventory and you can not stack them in storage forcing you to pull items out and manually stack them on the ground
cooking is broken but the rework for it is likely near
when chopping sticks and logs up I feel like they should pre-bundle as I just find it silly that my character just tosses everything around on the ground than afterwords bundles.
why are there no improvised helmets

Despite all that I really been loving the game and am very hopeful for the future. The dev team has been perhaps one the most vocal and likable teams I ever seen and I am more than happy to buy their support packs. Hope the next time I write one these the game is fully launch and consumes all my free time.

[Ron]

Originally posted by Diabolical Sweet:

There are death-matches and events for pvp and a hand full of locations players "may" be and this is ...OK.

And those events are great for when a player gets the PvP itch on an official. Especially considering the very true statement below...

Originally posted by Diabolical Sweet:

There is a issue, a big issue, with pvp and that is its sometimes extremely hard to find especially on a official server. The pvp often boils down to 2 things. You either find people camping a safe zone or a police station/bunker which can lead to good pvp but this is rather scarce. The 2nd one is just getting the drop on someone or they getting the drop on you. There is very very little pvp even on a pvp server.

The game greatly lacks push to attract people all to the same location and what locations do attract people you can go long periods of time with just running into 1 single player there. My suggestion to fixing this is a simple one and that can be example on games like "rust" where the devs added things like cargo ships and rare loot crates that can only be open or access at certain times.
**the devs have cargo drops** but i really think adding more world events that set up potential pvp hotspots would be healthy for the pvp community so they have chances to go all out and bring their best gear to a extremely lucrative event. You can have something like a large pvp zone could spawn but everyone on the server can get a 30min heads up of where it will spawn and move to that location and when it starts crates would spawn in buildings and poi's in that grid that normally wouldnt be there and these crates would require tools to open but would have extremely good loot. The kicker would be these zones would be hotspots for pvp giving pvp players content to unload those reserves and have some fun in outside of deathmatches.

Nice critique. Although great ideas, you definitely need to turn to private servers for any fast and furious PvP action.

On officials, there's a reason for this and you may have missed many of the heated discussions about this very subject since launch in 2018.

Vanilla scum is by design a hardcore survival game with PvP elements; not the other way around. Survival is the primary goal and PvP secondary.

This design actually makes sense if you think about it.
In a survival game, you are trying to stay alive. Actively looking for other players to engage in PvP is counter productive to survival (running to the firefight is a great way to get killed and getting killed is not the point of survival)

That said, if PvP happens by chance and not intentionally, and you get killed; well, sh*t happens.
The chance that one could get killed by another player on an official or vanilla server makes the game very thrilling. As we know, NPC's are predictable and have behavioural patterns but Human players don't.

In closing, the PvE elements have been slowly trickling in and more are on the way.
By 1.0v, Official servers or a vanilla private server will hopefully have an awesome survival experience and the PvP community will be able to get there fix on private servers that are configured for fast PvP.

[Doc Holliday]

Interesting to me that a returning player sees the game as it really is at the moment (empty PvE, tacked on survival and instead, PvP focussed servers because that's all that is left to do).

Loads of work in progress on missions, AI and stuff to do in PvE hopefully but new POIs like the B0 Hospital and Salt flats where there is NOTHING and nothing to loot (see OP point on this as well) don't give any confidence at all.

Sidenote - I completely agree with your point on map flow and attraction to the same locations OP. Map flow and the player 'journey' in this game needs a lot of work.

[Ron]

Originally posted by Doc Holliday:

SI completely agree with your point on map flow and attraction to the same locations OP. Map flow and the player 'journey' in this game needs a lot of work.

And the point of funneling players to a certain location would be? So they can kill each other?

That's kind of counter productive to trying to stay alive isn't it? I'm okay with that but then they need to change the game description from survival to looter-shooter.

And please don't get me wrong Doc, PvP can be thrilling but it shouldn't be the focus of a survival game.
If it happens by chance, that's fine.

[Doc Holliday]

Originally posted by Pastafari:

Originally posted by Doc Holliday:

SI completely agree with your point on map flow and attraction to the same locations OP. Map flow and the player 'journey' in this game needs a lot of work.

And the point of funneling players to a certain location would be? So they can kill each other?

That's kind of counter productive to trying to stay alive isn't it? I'm okay with that but then they need to change the game description from survival to looter-shooter.

And please don't get me wrong Doc, PvP can be thrilling but it shouldn't be the focus of a survival game.
If it happens by chance, that's fine.

I should have been clearer I think, my bad.

Map flow is a really tricky one to get right, as an (unpopular) closest example, DayZ does it better - spawn in the South or East, mapflow drives you inland to loot and survive. Crap yourself because if you die you spawn a long way away and have to re-loot unless you've made plans and a stash etc.

In comparison, Scum.. roll character, spawn anywhere, go to bunker, die, spawn anywhere, go to bunker. Mapflow isn't even considered and the crazy CoD spawn system doesn't help at all.

All before we even start talking about interaction, PvP or otherwise.

[Ron]

Got it Doc. It's all good :)
I think we all have one thing in common, we see the potential this game has and want it to succeed.

Unfortunately, it's going to be a while until the final product and until then we'll just have to make do with what we have.

Kudos to the Devs though for at least allowing private server configuration. Kind of makes up for the lack of content (missions, more NPC's, etc ...)

[Doc Holliday]

Originally posted by Pastafari:

Got it Doc. It's all good :)
I think we all have one thing in common, we see the potential this game has and want it to succeed.

Unfortunately, it's going to be a while until the final product and until then we'll just have to make do with what we have.

Kudos to the Devs though for at least allowing private server configuration. Kind of makes up for the lack of content (missions, more NPC's, etc ...)

Point being that we shouldn't have to rely on private servers for this though if you ask me....

[insettoinfetto]

Thank for your reply, you are a PvPer so your review is focused on that aspect.
Maybe you should come and visit it again when NPC will be into the game as they will deeply change how PvP will be.

I'd like my feeling about actual situation of the game, as a player with 2k+ hours of play.

I honestly miss malfunctions, fog, and the old jumping system. Malfuctions cause it limit the abuse of weapons as a tool for everything (from cleaning a town to raiding).
Fog for the immersion it gave. It is amazing moving around, hearing some shots and trying to find the source. Can't wait to see it again.
The actual jumping bring me back to PUBG or CSGO. I love PvP but for SCUM I don't want an arcade PvP. I personally think it should be more focused on strategy and less on acrobatic abilities.

Metabolism is still not present in the game as there is too much food. I keep eating whatever I found without any side effects. Rotten food should bring some consequences.
And I'd like to see starvation as a main reason to move around not just for looting another rifle.

Weather have no impact on gameplay, except for weight on clothings and a lot of noise. Maybe with diseases this will change. I'd like to see hands shaking for the cold, making us unable to shoot without having gloves. Or getting fever while spending too much time outside during a snow storm.

Mechs as unkillable NPC is what I love most. Being able to destroy anything is how 90% of FPS games works, from basic NPC to bosses. SCUM is on another league to me. Visually less imprortant but much more complete and complex than any other survival game.

Puppets are far too weak. Entering a bunker with just a stone axe or a wood bow, this is not my idea of survival games.

I personally think that SCUM need more PvE players as they will understand better the importance to many PvE aspects (metabolism, weather, diseaes, NPC, missions, etc.)

[insettoinfetto]

Originally posted by Pastafari:

Originally posted by Doc Holliday:

SI completely agree with your point on map flow and attraction to the same locations OP. Map flow and the player 'journey' in this game needs a lot of work.

And the point of funneling players to a certain location would be? So they can kill each other?

That's kind of counter productive to trying to stay alive isn't it? I'm okay with that but then they need to change the game description from survival to looter-shooter.

And please don't get me wrong Doc, PvP can be thrilling but it shouldn't be the focus of a survival game.
If it happens by chance, that's fine.

+1
If the PvE is easy, the user experience will be defined by PvP and so population and server settings will become a major aspect.
If the PvE is hard, the user experience will be more or less the same from SP to Hardcore PvP.

I vote for the second as we already have a strong PvP side of the game.
Now the world need to be our real opponent.

[Delle(DK)]

The major reason for me no to play the game in singleplayer and on official standard multiplayer servers is that it just feel empty.
The problem is there are simply to few zoombies and the game feel more or less empty with few exceptions.
And even when they chase me i can just dump though a window or shut the door and they will NEVER get inside to hurt me.
It would be better if the zoombies now and then actual in rare cases could crawl though the window just like me. And it would also be great if zoombies in some cases could attack and hit the door to scare the player and maybe even i in rare cases smash the door.

[xKiCkx]

Hey there OP, thank you for your extensive feedback, some of the stuff that you have mentioned here are already in the works, unfortunately, it takes some time to do it properly and to implement it in the game, one such stuff is the item loot, as that will be more customizable in the future.

[Ron]

Originally posted by Delle(DK):

even when they chase me i can just dump though a window or shut the door and they will NEVER get inside to hurt me.
It would be better if the zoombies now and then actual in rare cases could crawl though the window just like me. And it would also be great if zoombies in some cases could attack and hit the door to scare the player and maybe even i in rare cases smash the door.

That's in the works. There was even a video on Tomislav's twitter of a puppet opening a door.

[CrankyOldMan]

Hey Op! We run 2 servers with almost the identical settings on each and the pve server is doing better than the pvp server as far as log ons.
We are not 10x loot, bot shop, earn coins as you play, max cars with high latency, rubber banding and fps hits!
I have over 5000 hours in scum I have played everything from official to the maxed out servers....The game engine cannot handle more than 40 players on the map, above that many and you start having rubber banding and other issues!
Further optimization hopefully will help with this!

[Jolie Rouge]

Originally posted by insettoinfetto:

Weather have no impact on gameplay, except for weight on clothings and a lot of noise. Maybe with diseases this will change. I'd like to see hands shaking for the cold, making us unable to shoot without having gloves. Or getting fever while spending too much time outside during a snow storm.

Rain makes you feel cold, wet clothes too. Add wind and you're freezing, even down south. That's the effect, you need a fire asap.

[Sweets]

Whoa, I going need wait after work read all this

[insettoinfetto]

Originally posted by Jolie Rouge:

Originally posted by insettoinfetto:

Weather have no impact on gameplay, except for weight on clothings and a lot of noise. Maybe with diseases this will change. I'd like to see hands shaking for the cold, making us unable to shoot without having gloves. Or getting fever while spending too much time outside during a snow storm.

Rain makes you feel cold, wet clothes too. Add wind and you're freezing, even down south. That's the effect, you need a fire asap.

Never seen a hypotermia o any other side effects. I keep moving around during storm even at night. No need of a fire. It will come i'm sure but here what I mean :

get wet -> cold-> fever -> aspirin
kidney "contraction" -> need to pee more often
shaking of the hands during aim | making noise when still (body shaking, teeth rattle)
clothes get wet -> metabolism should ignore heat value of the clothes -> hypotermia
those with low BMI have effects X2 (fat is important!)
major risk of a heart attack if BMI is high and you ate a lot