The Feedback Thread

[Throwback]

Warning, extremely salty post ahead.

Why do my minions insist on running off without me and dying nigh-instantly? Surely something can be done with morale that means they will run for safety when they start losing masses of health.

Why does one negative personality trait mean a person is completely unacceptable unless you have 3-4 entertainers? And why are negative traits so ridiculously common? I get that at high populations it's really easy to keep everyone happy - but that's an entirely separate problem that has been, imho, incorrectly solved. Do something with hunger, do something with damaged buildings, do something. But make it something *else* that doesn't make it impossible to build a clan. On that matter - why are my clan members constantly unhappy, even when I only have 2 and one is alone in my base?

Why does warrior suck so bad? Granted I don't have a lot of experience playing ranged characters to compare, but the only way I can stay alive is by playing extremely cautiously. It's no issue and I can do it - but I suspect ranged characters don't have this issue.

Why do NPCs stand in poison?

Why do monsters respawn so insanely quickly? Can't you trigger it when the player is not present for a set amount of time?

Why does stamina exist? It adds exactly 0 to the game.

After 203 hours I am done with this game for now.

[Destro*]

"Why do my minions insist on running off without me and dying nigh-instantly?"

Non-existent minion AI.

"Why does warrior suck so bad?"

You kind of answers yourself on this one. But, it's because it's melee. :shrug:

"Why do NPCs stand in poison?"

Non-existent npc AI.

"Why do monsters respawn so insanely quickly? Can't you trigger it when the player is not present for a set amount of time?"

You can always change game pace to slowest. :shrug:

"Why does stamina exist? It adds exactly 0 to the game."

I believe it is intended to balance out range vs. melee by limiting kiting. Eventually you run out of stamina and get slowed down which makes kiting less effective. But, that's just my theory.

It's probably really just in the game for realism. But, I don't think it makes too big of an impact. This point makes me kind of want to buff the no stamina penalty to like 80%.

"After 203 hours I am done with this game for now."

Pssst... Go play my mod!

I know my answers are pretty pointless and your questions are likely rhetorical, but how could I pass up an opportunity to shamelessly advertise my mod?

[Throwback]

Originally Posted by Destro*

Pssst... Go play my mod!

I did read up on your mod, but 'more everything' is not what I'm after. I mainly just want a working environment and a semblance of balance.

More issues while I'm responding:

'Evil' clans. They are basically there to have a bad guy to fight, ok. But they are 50-60% of possible clans! They should have a really strong 'friendship' reward to make it desirable to put time & money into keeping them alive.

Money: mostly fixed, IF I identify all my own items. imo as the game goes on and inventories get bigger, the scale should tip towards hitting 'identify all'.

Repair costs: Melee goes through waaaaay more repairs than ranged. It's dumb and it stops them upgrading their armour as much as other classes, which is kind of ironic because they need gear more than other classes. Don't know the solution. Perhaps an armour repairing skill or durability loss prevention in one of the trees?

Plate armour in defender skill tree should be default, or at least cheaper.

Zombie infections don't give the flavour intended. Basically if you have an infection you cure it asap so it has no bearing on anything. If you don't have potions, the game sucks as your life slowly drains away. There is no middle ground or decision making - you either are having a crap experience of slowly dying, or infection has no impact. Playing RNG with resist potions is not fun, due to the above russian roulette impact. One solution is to make Potions scarce but a guaranteed cure. Infection would then be a very long sliding scale that is unavoidable but with ever-increasing impacts, so you have to decide how long you can go without a cure.

[Throwback]

Shadow, the only reason I am so full of bitterness is because when this game works, it is the best single player experience I have ever had. Hands down.

That said, here are some more issues:

Monsters & clans talking to me. Firstly it is way too frequent. Secondly, if I hit R to bring up my relations screen and a monster/clan has a message for me, hitting R to close the screen should *wipe* the message. I shouldn't have to click the button.

Magic bags have affixes & suffixes which can only apply to NPCs.

I had another but I forget.

[Destro*]

Booooooo.

I would suggest that you try to make your own mod then as you could fix most issues that you have mentioned yourself through modding, but I imagine that you already have a reason as to why that isn't a solution for you, as you would have already done that by now.

Oh well. To each their own.

[Throwback]

Time for another gripe update, about an issue I've posted before.

This time, a clan member turned into a zombie (something I didn't know could happen, so that's cool).

The problem? 7 of my 12 remaining clan members instantly went insane and the rest are all very close to 100, to the point where I would just have to restart (which I'm not going to bother with).

Insanity chain reactions are very, very poor form.

As for alternatives, I personally would prefer a deep happiness hit. Surely the survivors of a zombie apocalypse are expecting people to die? Insanity should imo be reserved for fringe cases - people with the zombasite virus, unstable personalities etc. *especially* since there is no good way to reduce your team members' insanity score - R&R is extremely slow and at level 17 with 12+ people I am yet to see a 'counsellor' trait.

Anyway, that's yet another re-infatuation with zsite spoiled.

Edit: For anyone reading this, I am attempting to learn to mod - there is a huge amount of stuff that can be changed including insanity modifiers. Very cool stuff.

[fab]

I would slightly increase the animation speed when loot drops. It feels a bit slow and I can't pick up the items until they finally hit the ground and the labels show. (I'm using the option to pick up items by label only, but I'm not sure it makes a difference)

Alternatively display the labels and make the items pickup-able somehow at the sanimation start?

Aesthetic / UI suggestion
In general I'd suggest to read up a bit on typography. It's a weak point of all the Soldak games. Reading items for example is slow because of so much white text with hardly any separation. Especially, use font size. For example item bonuses in large text, "required (attribute)" in small text. Organize text in the item description in small groups and use white space. This helps to read the information faster. It would benefit your website too. Plenty or articles around it's really not difficult and anybody can learn this without being a graphic designer.

Also consider potentially using sans serif for most text for readability, and keep serif for flavour in the story / quest text, NPC names, etc.

[Ghost Matter]

Ambushes are far too overpowered. Most of my hardcore characters have died from ambushes (sometimes coupled with a random trap: instant death). I can sometimes get 5-6 ambushes in a row just while fighting the first one, barely staying alive.

I just had a level 31 character die when I got an ambush of 5 monsters and there were fiery explosions and BAM, dead. In a zone lower than my level.

[pseudo310]

It feels like the difficulty has jumped up immensely. I'm getting quests so fast I can't manage them, and after a good bit of progress into an area my base just gets swamped with relentless zombie attacks. The latter seems linked to the former but I'm not sure what to do besides quest faster and I'm not exactly dragging my feet. Losing an area and having to start the next with a wrecked village, which makes me even more likely to lose again, has gotten way more common.

[Crisses]

I consider "insanity" to be people's "paranoia" load. If you wander in the wilderness and you're not mentally prepared for it, it's going to take a toll, give you some significant PTSD, etc. This is an apocalypse, after all. Think Mad Max etc. -- people are going to get greedy, selfish, looking out for #1. You are taking a random group of strangers and trying to build an intentional community in the middle of — well, frankly —*Hell on "Earth". If you let someone in with Stage 2 zombasite and are out adventuring, you could come back to an entirely infected clan. Makes sense that folk are paranoid, that things like hanging out outside walls of the town will increase that, etc.

If someone in town "turns" renegade, etc. -- It's going to shake everyone's confidence. Makes sense.

You don't have to play with these options, but that doesn't make it unrealistic.

Other clans looking out for #1 and being selfish and relentless etc. -- again, makes sense.

The only time it would make sense for less of this would be "family" option. You start out with hopefully a highly trusting clan less likely to back-stab you at the price of not being able to take in new recruits to strengthen your skills etc.

I agree with the last post though — it has jumped in intensity if you're talking about using the Orc Schism expansion. All the expansions raise the intensity/difficulty. I think the idea is people buy them if they like and have played the base game and are perhaps getting somewhat bored with it and need it to be more challenging.