The Feedback Thread

[Destro*]

"the dev is responsible that I couldn't imagine I'll use so few skills"

It's not the developers responsibility to personally cater to you and make you happy or to make the game in a way that you like. The world doesn't revolve around you. You're being egotistical. It's your fault you're dissatisfied, not theirs.

If you had a good reason/argument for your dissatisfaction, like a REAL game issue, this situation would be different. But, you don't. It's all preference.

[Vifarc]

Originally Posted by Destro*

It's not the developers responsibility to personally cater to you and make you happy or to make the game in a way that you like.

Right, I didn't said that: It's the pride of the (independant) dev to be responsible of what he creates, even it doesn't please me.
If it please me, he is responsible; if it doesn't please me, he is responsible too (why not?).

[Destro*]

@Vifarc

"Why not?"

So, is the dev also responsible for everybody in the world not knowing about his game?
Is he responsible for his game not solving cancer?
Is he responsible for his game not serving as an alarm clock to wake you up in the morning?
Is he responsible for his game not baking you a delicious desert on command?

Seriously, where do you draw the line on responsibility? Because, according to your logic, it is the responsibility of an game's creator to make a product perfectly inline with your specifications, otherwise the creator has failed you and is responsible for failing.

In fact, using your reasoning, you could say that the developer has failed every single person who has ever played the game that didn't agree with its design. 'It's not that the player's didn't like the game, it's the developers fault for not making the game good enough.' (Which is naturally false because its nobody's fault that the expectations of players and the vision implemented by the developer don't always align. No game is perfect for everybody. It's simply impossible.)

Well, whatever. My counter-argument remains that it's unfair to blame a developer for not meeting one's preferences. That's too selfish. If my explanations above don't change your mind, then I can really only hope that you make a breakthrough for yourself one day, because living life while blaming others for your own dislikes is a really sad way to exist. I wish you the best.

I do want to correct myself on what I said in previous posts though. I don't even think it's your fault or anybody's fault. Nobody is responsible. It's just life.

[Jack67]

I've had this game since release and just recently, I've been binging on it. Since Steven is sharing code between this game and Din's Legacy, I thought I'd mention some of the features/bugs that occasionally make me want to walk away from the game:

* Rarely, town gates (doors) will mis-align and draw on a 45-degree angle, instead of 0 or 90. It functions, but it's wonky.
* Town dwellers, even assigned as guards, are pathetic. In the mid-game, I'm racing back to the town every 30 seconds to a minute to kill a zombie bug right next to my town dwellers. Sometimes they'll kill the bug, but not until several minutes have passed. It's ridiculous.
* More AI: The town gets attacked and the dwellers don't even notice, unless a monster comes within striking distance.
* Mid-game (halfway up the advancement ladder), I'm racing back to the town every few minutes to stave off some invasion. It would be nice if the town could take care of itself a little better. There would be more satisfaction in building a powerful town, rather than relying on the player to constantly race back and keep the town from burning down because all the creature guards got trounced and the villagers are wandering around while the town burns. I realize you want the player to be the hero, but jeez. And this is on "low stress" mode.
* Occasionally a teleport trap will stick me between a torch and a wall. Fortunately, I've had my personal teleport stone still active when this happened, but I thought Steven fixed this a long time ago.
* When questing to kill "Monster X" and I got to the place where the quest marker is, I search and find out that "Monster X" is now living in another map, it would be great if the quest marker could be updated.
* I have occasionally found a new teleport stone before mine is used. There has to be a flag to set in the game so this doesn't happen.
* I'm not a fan of the taunts. Maybe a switch in the future to turn that off? Since it seems my hero has a mystic cell phone, how about if I just block that taunting caller? :-)

I'm sure there are other little things that I'll rediscover later and I don't know if much of this will translate to Din's Legacy; I've only played a little of the early access game... enough to see Zombasite's influence.

Normally, I wouldn't bother commenting on a game this old, but I know Steven is still patching it and it's sharing a considerable amount of design and code with Din's Legacy.

[Shadow]

Originally Posted by Jack67

* Town dwellers, even assigned as guards, are pathetic. In the mid-game, I'm racing back to the town every 30 seconds to a minute to kill a zombie bug right next to my town dwellers. Sometimes they'll kill the bug, but not until several minutes have passed. It's ridiculous.

Lots of good comments. For this particular one, they might be infected and if they are they won't kill zombies of any kind including the parasites.

[Bluddy]

>> * I'm not a fan of the taunts. Maybe a switch in the future to turn that off? Since it seems my hero has a mystic cell phone, how about if I just block that taunting caller? :-)

Totally agree with this. You shouldn't be taken to a modal window and out of the game for a taunt. It gets very annoying. The fact that the UI element blinks until clicked on makes it impossible to disregard.

Here are a few UI ideas to deal with this:

* Make the icon stop flashing. Honestly flashing stuff is not enjoyable, and should only be used for absolute emergencies.
* Make it so hovering over the icon shows the message or some of it in a tooltip. This would allow us to avoid going into the modal menu.
* Make it so a right click dismisses the notification (not sure if it's the case currently).

An even better mechanism would be making a message queue that allows messages to build up, so we can get multiple messages at once (similar to the help icons), but this would require a lot more programming.

[Jack67]

Originally Posted by Shadow

Lots of good comments. For this particular one, they might be infected and if they are they won't kill zombies of any kind including the parasites.

The townies in question weren't infected with Zombasite; I wasn't getting notification that anyone was infected (this happens many times, so I'm not talking about a singular incident). But is it possible they were infected with something else? Yes, maybe. I'll have to look next time.

Would personality type have anything to do with it? Maybe ulterior motives? Could the townsperson nearest to the bug be subverting the town and bringing them in?

[Shadow]

Originally Posted by Jack67

The townies in question weren't infected with Zombasite; I wasn't getting notification that anyone was infected (this happens many times, so I'm not talking about a singular incident). But is it possible they were infected with something else? Yes, maybe. I'll have to look next time.

Would personality type have anything to do with it? Maybe ulterior motives? Could the townsperson nearest to the bug be subverting the town and bringing them in?

If an NPC has the carrier version of the infection, the game does not tell you about it. The NPC basically will actively hide it.

[Bluddy]

I've been playing some Zombasite for the purpose of comparing to Legacy, and one thing I've noticed is that my NPCs are always getting unhappy. I figured out what it is -- I send them on expeditions because I'm low on supplies, and I'm on negative expedition points, which cause all my NPCs to go renegade.

I think this is a real problem. Expedition points should be capped at 0 -- otherwise you get trapped in this very artificial state that's also really confusing to someone who isn't knowledgeable, where NPCs get constantly unhappier. There should also be some way to trade food and potions with other clans, since you may be out of expedition points. Also, if you cancel an expedition (which is easy to do accidentally), you should get the points back. But they should never go negative, as it just doesn't make sense for all your NPCs to be this unhappy over an artificial scarcity construct.

[Bluddy]

Shadow would you consider patching it so that expedition points can't go negative? I think this is a critical thing, because going negative completely ruins one's experience (especially for a newbie) -- the NPCs become chronically upset and rebel.