Thread 725424276

>add npcs
>game is fixed
It's literally THAT simple. Why the fuck haven't they done it yet?

>>725424276 (OP)
>game has been in EA for 10+ years now
>somehow nobody has taken the formula, added everything people have been asking for and released that as a competitor

>>725424361
yeah even vampire survivors clones started popping out of nowhere a few months after Vampire survivors appeared on steam

>>725424361
VEIN is looking pretty good. it's in early access now and seems to be going like Zoimboid, only it's not isometric

You don't understand, we need to add mining and smelting and crafting and pottery and tanning and more katanas to the game.
This game is hopeless, it's gone down a sandbox crafting route when we could have had survival horror kino with cool NPCs and play out TWD Everytime you start a new game.

Oh well

I've been trying to get into the game but I dunno it just feels boring? It's got everything I like (ton of replayability, mods, every run is different etc) but I just can't commit to playing it. I've got about 14 hours and it's just like "yeah it's fun but what's the point".

>>725424506
I played a bit of Vein and it just feels like another generic open world crafting game.

>>725424621
You need to be in your characters mind, you need to fear death. It's hard to simulate but it's kino when it's done.
Also try playing with low pop strong sprinters with extra with no respawn, fun way to play.

>>725424621
It's a sandbox game where there's nothing to do, like Kenshi.

I bought the game when it was in Desura almost 10 years ago and it had NPCs.
They remade the game and only now they added working NPCs.
This is nothing new.

>>725424740
I've been playing my own modeled character. Actually fighting to survive is fun. I've never made it past 2 days but I just need to commit to it. I can feel the hook is there, I can feel the game is ready to click I just need to keep pushing and actually launch the fucking game which seems to be harder than anything these days.

>>725424790
oh yeah game changed A LOT. I remember seeing the demo builds decades ago and i still have one pic from the older builds before the rework. Compare this with new builds.

>>725425036
>game has barely changed visually since then

What have the devs been doing exactly? I see they just hired a bunch of people but is it too late?

>>725424926
>I've never made it past two days
Really? What are you doing. Gotta think like your character would, if it seems stupid and dangerous stay away from it.
The more attached to your character you are the better.

>>725425208
anon i think you need to consult an optometrist

>>725424276 (OP)
but it has NPCs, why isn't anyone calling out this blatant lie of OP lol

>>725425215
>What are you doing

Exploring and trying to get loot. I don't want to stay in one place. I usually end up getting swarmed or dying to injuries. I'm playing custom occupation with the perks that looked good.

THIS FAME IS FUCKINC

>>725425397
Alright so you like the nomad style, I do too. One of my most memorable games, I had just gotten in a car and lived in the woods for like 4 days, but couldn't manage it anymore, so I went back into the urban areas (this was with sprinters) and ended up holding up at a house near a farm and staying there for quite some time, I made that my fortified base. I left the car on one night and completely ran out of gas so I had to travel a while to go places, I went into a cornfield near another house and there were was a pack of them that ended me. Man I loved that run it was great.

Whenever I think about zomboid I go back to when the dev was getting flak on reddit for the disgustingly slow development only for him to threaten suicide and redditors backed down

>muh game is boring
>muh no npcs
>muh we need endgame
>muh theres nothing to do
This is the problem when a niche game goes mainstream and attracts hordes of sub 85 IQ subhuman simians with unevolved prefrontal cortices. You need a carrot on a stick, a quest marker and a laundry list of things to do. You are literally a rat, a worm, a chimp addicted to skinner boxes and your brain is too primitive to conceive the idea of a sandbox game. You are literally everything that's wrong with the game's industry, the yellow paint exists for "people" like you.

>>725425703
My most memorable, in the 14 hours I've I've played, was just constantly running from this hoarde of zombies and limping through this huge field. I finally managed to find a house, with supplies and weapons after what felt like hours of walking. As I was bandaging myself up my guy just fell over and died.

>>725426097
I understand the points you are articulating, but I must gently push back in disagreement. For one thing: Nigger.

>>725426598
This is an annonymous imageboard. We don't sign our own posts on 4chan mr. Nigger.

miss nigger here has anyone seen my beloved husband

Mrs. Nigger here has anyone seen my husband

It doesn't even need NPCs, all it needs is some kind of objective outside of "just survive lol."
You could give every class its own unique story, and it wouldn't even be hard to implement.

>repairman
You need to repair a boat and escape to an uninhabited island. The items you need are spread across the world.
>doctor
You need to find a cure by experimenting on zombies.
>Burgerflipper
You need to find a rare rare heifer to make the perfect burger.

There are just off the top of my head, but I'm sure a bunch of people who are getting PAID can think of something better.

>>725426097
You are the sub 85 IQ subhuman if you can't understand why someone might end up getting bored after building an impenetrable base.

>dude how come you can't just enjoy eating every day to prevent starvation what are you dumb?
You are dumb. You are the blackest retard gorilla nigger in this thread. You need to leave.

>>725426691
4chan is now Reddit territory. Anonymous chuds have no power here anymore.

>>725424361
same reason no one made a kenshi clone or a bannerlord clone.
sandboxes are one of the hardest things to actually construct, and even harder to get right.

every zomboid clone is just this https://defusestudios.com/portfolio/survival-game-kit-v2/ with a zombie skin, no depth, no problems to solve, just run around looting and shooting.

>>725427251
Wrong. The point of the game is that you're surviving against all odds and will inevitably die. If you have a final objective then that's thrown out the window. Sure, the player can self-impose those for themselves, but the point of the game is surviving.
The problem with the latest updates is that they're built around ignoring that completely. With a bajillion pottery and forging and carpentry tweaks so that newfags and zoomers who play in multiplayer can survive for 27 years in the same server with like 3 slow weak blind & deaf zombies per square kilometer and constant item respawn. Because those zoomers and newfags are the game's new target audience.

>>725427579
>Wrong
It's a subjective matter. Surviving gets boring eventually, and that's an objective fact. If you don't want objectives, you can just ignore them. But some of us actually like to have a goal to work towards that isn't just surviving.

>>725424276 (OP)
The worst part about it all is that the game is genuinely good there's nothing like it, which makes the 2 year waits between major updates absolutely fucked, they don't even have multiplayer in it anymore (the latest version) which is the sole reason the game ended up getting attention that one time on Twitch, it's just all so agonising

I want to play some more but the latest update shat over my mods I think it had to do something with crashing the game when sleeping or something and I don't feel like booting up the game only for it to crash and I also don't want to uninstall all my mods to figure out which one is gay

>>725427910
NTA but I think a cure makes the most sense no matter the start.
make it so you need to bring some scientist NPC 4 zombie dicks hidden in facilities at different corners of the map.
players that dont want to do this can just never do it and survive forever 30 years.
players that want finality can "finish" the game by curing zombification.
everyone's happy.

>>725424276 (OP)
the devs are both lazy and competent, and the playerbase are complacent cuckolds.

>>725428228
>make the final dungeon to find a cure in that underground military facility
>have to go through floors filled with hundreds of zombies with no lights
would be kinda kino, but zomboid wants the inevitable THIS IS HOW YOU DIED ending, and the dev will never update this shit

>>725427579
>Wrong. The point of the game is that you're surviving against all odds and will inevitably die

Which is silly because it's extremely easy to not die unless you crank the difficulty up to actual absurdity. The fact that you're still going to "inevitably die" after you've spent 100+ days building an actual impregnable fortress and you've wiped out the entire population of the state is retarded.

>>725428361
The week 1 mod has a nuke event that a nuke will land on Knox County unless you get into that military base and down to the 15th Underground floor to cancel the launch. Or course getting there in 1 week and surviving a military base filled with soldiers with guns is insane.

>>725428361
Yeah, they're blinded by their vision and instead of giving the people what they really want, they double down and make pottery skills. Like, seriously? Just add options, what's that hurt? Allow the escape objective. You can still keep your "how you died" modes.

>>725428421
dying from a simple mistake 6 months into a save is both kino and tedious, I dont really know how I feel about that.
I think you need the tension of permadeath to keep things interesting, but if you start getting into a megabase and post scarcity that tension fades and then it's just annoying if you die.
the two things are kind of at odds with one another and the solution is probably >>725428228 so that you're forced to continue to take risks and then dying feels fair and earned, because you were trying to do something difficult.

>add all these skills
>add all this shit you can build and craft and what not
>it can all be invalidated nearly instantly

So what's the point of leveling all that shit and crafting and building all that stuff then? Why would I put in all the effort just for it to all be instantly lost due to my mistake or game jank?

>>725424276 (OP)
Has anyone tried just turning off or modding out all the zombies and simply building and farming? I feel like this game would make a fun stardew valley type game loop with a town? Farming is kinda fun in zombid and building

>>725429589
they capitulated and you can generate a new character in the same world you died in and just go back to your base.

but yeah the skills are pretty tedious, I dunno why you need to take apart 50 televisions to understand how to plug things into a generator.
I feel like skills shouldn't really exist and maybe the only things you should learn are the non-common-sense recipes
I get it's probably there to pad play time but it's kinda at odds with long term gameplay.

>>725426097
>This is the problem when a niche game goes mainstream
https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2013/01/tales-from-the-metaverse/
build 41 zoomerfuck

>>725424276 (OP)
Zomboid is just CDDA for casuals.

>>725429812
I've set the zombies to really low and just made a farm before. It's alright. Was comfy for a while and then it got boring.

>>725430329
Yeah but you could technically build your own small little town or compound and deforest everything idk. Everything gets boring eventually. I have no fucking time to do it tho

>>725430220
two thousand and thirteen
holy shit

>>725427529
>no depth, no problems to solve,
so, zomboid?
>erm it totally has depth you have to watch these TV shows at specific times during the first week and--
wide as a mildly interesting lake, deep as a puddle?

>>725430494
>wide as a mildly interesting lake, deep as a puddle?
need to get food: canned food is fine but is finite and fresh food is better for mood/boredom, how to get meat? need to hunt or fish, need to find equipment, need to find locations, need to refrigerate to keep fresh, need power, need generators, need fuel which is non renewable and requires excursions to go get.
or you could farm for vegetables which needs... etc
or you could get farm animals which needs... etc

none of the zomboid clones bother with any of this.

>devs keep poaching modders to avoid getting upstaged
I deeply regret purchasing this trash

>>725424506
>Vein
looks like generic asset flip bullshit. PASS.

>>725428080
this.
Interest will dwindle overtime and only the most autistic of people will stick around.
Hopefully them removing multiplayer is just them ironing it out, if not they are retarded.

>>725424506
i'd rather go back to playing 7 days to die.

>>725425380
nta but it looks much like i remember last year, just more bells & whistles now like mods and mp, visually the same

>>725433734
>removing multiplayer
do they actually talk about this anywhere? I was under the assumption because b42 is basically a rewrite, multiplayer just wasn't done yet.

>>725433853
they changed textures, illumination, physics and a lot of other things.

I think a zombie survival game would work better as an extraction shooter. Think Resident Evil Outbreak with modern hardware and more on the survival horror side.

Imagine a map similar to Racoon City streets where most buildings are enterable. Grouped up zombies can bust through almost any door given enough time. Guns randomly spawn in various buildings on round start. One life only, no revives, and the timer should be maybe 1-1.5 hours before the city is nuked.

Just spitballin here.

>>725424276 (OP)
It's boring as fuck.

Ive been playing for too long to experience the rush that hooked me when I first installed. Significantly too easy, sprinters and cryo winter and whatever other settings I jack up dont cut it. The goal should always be simple survival, and the issue since I passed 1.5k hours is that there's no longer anything pushing against me trying to prevent my survival. The zombies are easy to handle. The food is sustainable. The water falls out of the sky. I'd love some NPC threats to my survival.

>>725434220
i can see it if i bring them up side by side. for 10 years? really doesnt look much different. i'd believe you if you said your screenshot was current build, most people wouldn't look closely enough

>>725424276 (OP)
Anon they can't even change some fucking integers to make food values realistic.
What chance do they have making NPC's if they can't figure out simple mathematics?

>>725434527
no horde night?

>>725424276 (OP)
how about adding some fucking seasons to a seasonal survival game first so winter would actually mean something

>>725434079
>do they actually talk about this anywhere? I was under the assumption because b42 is basically a rewrite, multiplayer just wasn't done yet.
You are now reminded of B41 having removed multiplayer as they planned on making an exclusively server-side system to prevent cheating and such (despite everyone using whitelists and private servers anyways lmao)
So they then wasted like two fucking years with no multiplayer, only to then shit out a client-side system in three months because they literally could not make a server-side one.

>>725434907
I never say this, because it goes against every fiber of my being.
these guys need a project manager.

>>725424276 (OP)
Make it playable via controller

>>725434546
the reason why it changed was because the stealing. Dev retard lost all his work because someone broke out his house and he lost all the code. He was considering giving up and release how it was but he remade most of the code from zero. Today he is just being a retard with "realism".

>>725427579
You dont play the game at all you poser all the multiplayers use overpowered sprinting zombies

>>725435752
>someone broke out his house
Good morning saar!

>>725424361
>>game has been in EA for 10+ years now
WHAT?!?!??!?!?! Jesus

>>725424361
HumanitZ is fairly close

>>725424585
It's not like we can't have both, but without NPCs the game is so fucking boring.

I sometimes play with that mod that adds in NPCs. the best part is when a bunch of dudes pull up on you and start shooting and stabbing your ass to death

>>725424361
Why don't we just do it then?

>>725434425
CDDA has a modification like that, kinda, its also a roguelike
https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/10burw2/i_made_a_raidbased_mod_inspired_by_eft_and_dark/

>>725424506
Vein is the only game I've seen with maybe Potential to rival Project Zomboid, that HumanitZ and Zed Zone. But the combat... just eh. The reason why zomboid is as tense of a game that it is because everything can go wrong in a matter of seconds in regards to combat with zombies. It's pretty quick for a bite or a scratch to happen and Vein doesn't get that part right because the zombies just don't feel as hard to kill, you don't have to worry about spacing and it doesn't really matter so much about whether they're in a group to a certain degree because you can easily manoeuvre around them, it feels too easy to kill them and they just don't feel like that much of a threat. Even if it does infection mechanics (which is obviously the right approach), the zombies just don't feel threatening enough. That could be rectified but I think they need to just overhaul how melee weapons work too so it makes it harder to kill them. Put in things like swing recoil and make it so that you really do need to worry about keeping distance with them. That you have to keep backing away and trying to lose them. The zombie AI might need some tuning for all of this to work correctly because their tracking just doesn't feel as aggressive, but I'm unsure if I'm being overly harsh over some very early phase of it. Also from my perspective it seems too easy to be able to get weapons and stuff like that. Everything just feels like it's handed to you. Working cars are not uncommon to come by. Vein is doing most aspects of Zomboid's simulation I think, so it's properly hardcore survival. Yet it doesn't feel hardcore enough at the same time. The Zombies themselves need to have more animations so you have multiple ways of being attacked, it needs to somehow translate what Zomboid's combat does, albeit even if it is primitive because that's what I want. For it to feel equally as risky like that. The fact that they stuck to a permadeath mechanic is a design foundation that I appreciate.

Remember when they released the NPC trailer like 2 years ago and stated in a blogpost that all the parts of the NPCs were already finished and all they need to do is put them all together?
Quite strange how they're STILL struggling with "dumb" animal npc behavior right now.

>>725426097
I'm going to shit in your mouth while you sleep.

>>725439195
So, what's the verdict then? Are they deliberately stalling or were they just lying about how much progress they made?

>>725424276 (OP)
I believe they hired some industry veteran who's also a big fan of the game to steer the project in the right direction recently so here's hoping

>>725439328
I believe they just completely lied about working on NPCs the last 6-7 years, cobbled together that dogshit trailer in a week, and have been desperately trying to add as much random crafting dogshit into the game as possible to stall which is also why they staggered the release of NPCs and started with animal npcs.

>>725439396
literally no amount of hiring will fix the fact that Indie Stone is a Canadian company with retarded working hours which lead to the game barely getting worked on.

>>725424361
The one in mediaeval england looks promising
They even said pz is its inspiration
Who knows when it will release tho

>>725436007
>dude Indians lmao
Reminder that you and people like you are actively making this board worse by constantly performing the digital equivalent of shitting in the streets.

You could import ten million Indians to Indie Stone's office tomorrow and nothing would happen for another 2-3 years still because the project lead there is so fucking incompetent that he lets 90% of his staff just not show up for work for months at a time.

>>725424276 (OP)
How exactly would NPCs fix any of the game's problems? How can you be sure it won't add pointless shit like fetch quests, or introduce bloat like many of the other features TIS introduced in B42? I'm far from happy with the game's current state, but I'm fully content playing as a lone scavenger.
>>725427391
NTA, but what would be your solution? I've tried jacking up food rarity, but I still end up with a massive stockpile 2 weeks in. Carpentry is also unavoidable if you want a reliable, infinite source of water post-shutoff.

>barricade your windows without clearing local zombies
>They break it down in 10 minutes
>Clear out local zombies
>Zero need for barricades for reminder of run
Like what's the point for barricading now? It's just decorative?

>>725424276 (OP)
You'll get NPCs, play the game, realize it's still boring as fuck, then quit.
Sandboxes are boring, give me a story, a campaign, an objective, something

>>725440270
NPCs would give you a end game goal and quests to do. Plus this was their intended version of NPCS (that they unlisted like they always do with NPC news)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oULByHbq5Tk

>>725440270
Are these zombies from something? Or are they just original?

>>725436568
I HATE HORDE MECHANIC
I HATE HORDE MECHANIC
I HATE HORDE MECHANIC

>>725440519
>a end game goal
You can have that without NPCs, though. Just have an evac chopper or boat stationed at Louisville, with its location randomized each run, and require the player to use a ham radio to locate it and figure out where to go.
>quests to do
How would Zomboid benefit from this? It's primarily a player-driven sandbox game. I don't see what adding an external motivator like this would do. If it's just completing quests for their rewards, I can loot buildings if I want a particular item without needing to fetch shit for an NPC.
>>725440781
Artist is Lokulo no Mawashimono. That's his OC. The art isn't depicting PZ in particular.

>>725424621
>it just feels boring?
>It's got everything
>replayability
>mods
>every run is different
>"yeah it's fun but what's the point"
Damn, maybe it's because it's got nothing, there's no replayability, and all the mods are bad?
Grab kitchen knife, go outside, steal everything including the curtains off your neighbour's home, go to meta locations for guns/tools/secluded housing, avoid highpop places because no items spawn there, grind the only 2 useful skills, die of boredom (quitting the save) or being scraped by a zombie you clicked on but the game disagreed
"Oh but I took agoraphobia this time!"
Oh wow, you get an anxious moodlet for being outside, big whoop

>>725440486
>Sandboxes are boring
Then why are you even commenting in this thread? some people don't like Kenshi either. It's just simply not for you. Part of the game is using your imagination to figure out what to do in it. The NPCs would be an extension of that. Triple A games games focused on zombies won't ever really do an outbreak sim. That's the distinction I suppose.

>>725440486
A good sandbox is outwardly a sandbox but has actual goals inside, pleasing everyone.
Sandbox-tards get to run around forever and do nothing of importance, and people who actually have standards can do quests/missions/plot.

>>725441217
>what would dynamic npcs with their own stories, a interesting endgoal and quests do to improve playability
gee i dont know faggot, guess I better just sit on the floor at 4x speed doing nothing

>>725439328
>Are they deliberately stalling
I've believed that for a long time, yeah. I've been constantly wondering if they've bitten off more than they can chew and that's the general pressing issue in my mind. I've lost track of how many statements they've made that led me to believe they were closer to achieving NPCS. If the animal AI was supposedly the bedrock foundation that would open the door then we've got a rocky road ahead and perhaps they've mislead us that animals were the real key milestone. If that's still the official line then they're going to be holding back us on for a good long time to come.

i feel like some of the people in this thread are completely unable to understand why people want npcs when multiplayer exists (lol). How brain damaged and ESL do you have to be to not understand that a NPC can be made to act more realistic and natural and have some dynamic quests and dialogue/reactions to their state than some fat retard with 300 ping shooting you on sight and running back to his rust base to metagame on discord with his friends?

>>725441318
Because I noticed a lot of people, including OP, think X or Y update will change everything but they likely just don't like sandbox games. If they ever add NPCs to Zomboid that won't change the core problem of the main cause of death being boredom.
I actually like Kenshi better despite preferring the zombie apocalypse setting because it has base building and management and it's what I think is lacking in Zomboid. Some way to rebuild civilization and not just wait to die of boredom in your impregnable house. But they'd need a lot more than simply add NPCs to make i work.

>>725442204
And equally if they change the official line that animals were the real gate to NPCs and it's now something else that will open the doors to complex behaviours then that would also be equally sketchy. I suspect that's going to happen, or perhaps it already happened in their goals and I missed it.

>>725442204
The official line in 2022 was
"We’ve got a LOT of NPC code, lots of cool systems, from Rimworld style priority and jobs system, personality systems, procedural story event systems, combat systems, autonomous survival behaviours, advanced group behaviour systems, vehicle driving systems, and a whole bunch more. While nothing could be described as 100% complete, the vast majority of the hard work has been done, is functional and is extremely cool."
So no they are being deliberately malicious and lying to everyone's face.

>>725424276 (OP)
Aren't zombies NPCs? That's the whole problem with this game. The zombies are just there, they serve no purpose and they have no agency. Sure they're scary to new players, but once you figure out their rudimentary AI they're just in the way, and the game punishes you for daring to interact with them. The muscle fatigue bullshit was the last straw for me. I don't give two fucking shits about smelting ore to make an axe head that breaks after cutting two trees down. As for firearms, fucking forget it.

Why build a fortress for an attack that will never come? People who resort to the "nomad" style of play are just trying to overcome the central tedium of a world where you scrounge mountains of food and gear that you'll never eat or use. I don't expect the devs to design their way out of this, once you go from the terror of a new start your only destination is a kind of lonely existentialism and dread that comes from living in a dead world by yourself. Once you've experienced that, you've experienced all the game really has to offer.

As for multiplayer, who cares, it's a different game entirely.

>>725442629
Ideally the NPCs they wanted to implement would probably do tasks for like 3 hours then sit around "dynamically interacting" with eachother and have wants/etc. so you could take in some people and one of them goes missing and you need to find them or a bunch of ski masked women show up to your base and use you as a breeding stud farm slave. Or showing up to a new area after months of surviving and there's a fully formed NPC society.
Of course Indie Stone could never pull this off but that's what they're promising.

>>725426097
this but unironically

>>725424276 (OP)
The bigger question is why havent they added achievements yet?!

>>725426097
you're the secondary though retard, npcs were supposed to be out in 2012 when this game was on desura still (you're too young to know what that is)

>>725442007
>dynamic npcs with their own stories, a interesting endgoal and quests
How would this functionally work in a sandbox like PZ, though? Think of it in terms of gameplay systems, not just concepts. Wouldn't having NPCs eventually result in monotony, as runs devolve into finding the same buildings or survivor homes and repeating the same few predefined NPC story lines and fetch quests for loot? The deepest you could realistically expect PZ's NPCs to get is something like the radiant quest givers from Oblivion/Skyrim. Radiant quests weren't interesting stories as much as they were
>go to this area with enemies
>get/do thing
>come back to me for a reward
Scarcity (something PZ's endgame lacks) is enough of a motivator for me to loot a building, so an NPC adding a marker to my map and telling me to clear it out is effectively redundant, even if they've promised to give me a machete for my troubles. I agree that PZ needs a solid end-goal, but I don't think NPCs are necessary or conducive to achieving it.

>>725424276 (OP)
I had fun so far and will start a new run today. My random generator said Riverside this run so it's gonna be a more chillaxed run. My Riverside base is the Yacht club building. The River is very helpful for infinite drinking water and fishing.
My main issue with Build 42 is missing the challenge maps. RIP movie studio and Kingsmouth island.

>>725424506
Vein looks cool and like a fun game but it still has too many unfinished placeholder assets for my taste.
>>725436568
HuMEMEnitZ. This game is STRANGE!
I wish melee was good but HumemenitZ hates melee and wants you to use guns.

>>725442007
yeah? you've obviously mastered the combat and meeting your characters needs so what else are you going to until you die? you know... the goal of every playthrough.

>>725442942
-kill 100 zombies
-kill 1000 zombies
-kill 10000 zombies
-die for the first time
-upgrade the Apache with air-to-surface guided missiles
-walk for 100km
-walk for 1000km
-install a mod

>>725443338
Would unironically give me a reason to buy the game.

>>725443338
Easy archivements:
>Kill your first zombie
>Drink bleach
>Clear the country club of zombies
>Find the pickaxe
>Find the fabled sledgehammer
>Survive a week
>Build a pipe bomb
Medium archivements:
>Find a katana
>Travel to every town with the same character
>Find the wedding dress
>Get to Louisville
>Survive a month
>Kill 1000 zombies in a single run
Hard archivements:
>Survive a year
>Smith a sword (B42)
>Smith a mace (B42)
>Wear full plate mail (B42)
>Survive a month without leaving Loisville
>Survive a year without leaving Louisville
>Clear the prison of zombies
>Kill 10000 zombies in a single run

>>725424276 (OP)
I bought this game in 2011 and it's still not finished

>>725439195
they even hired a modder who was making pretty good progress on an npc mod then they made him stop working on the mod and instead put him to work on making a fishing minigame for some reason

>>725442629
>Why build a fortress for an attack that will never come?
Turn up your spawn counts for zombies. Building a fortress can have a purpose. I get that's not the point your rant. But having crowds of infected banging on my base really actually happened and it was terrifying. And yes if you had to take a lucky guess: all due to a meta event that cursed me.

Was minecraft improved when they added villagers?

>>725445149
Yes because the villagers are a secret parody of DA JOOS which is very based and redpilled.

>>725443131
>dynamic NPCs with they own stories
If they be railroaded to die, i will drop pipebomb in lemmy letterbox.

Gave up on this game awhile ago
Call me when they decide to actually add some zombie content like random events instead of new materials to make pots with

>>725445384
I think the game should start with a ton of NPCs day one, but the vast majority of them die during the first week.
However a few chosen survivours wll survive and new ones (migrants) will be silently added if too many of the post week 1 survivours die.
And there should be fixed survivours like Kate and Baldspot but most of the survivours are randomized each run with random professions, traits, equipment and clothes. The longer the apocolypse goes on, the more well equipped the survivours are, so week 1 most of them are normal civilians with pointy sticks, but 5 months in most remaining NPC survivours have armor, first aid stuff, supplies, backpacks and serious weapons.

>>725429589
I don't understand the point of all these crafting skills when THE GAME IS SET IN FUCKING 1993
>spend months learning how to craft a bow
>you could have just gone to a sporting goods shop and looted a modern compound bow or crossbow far superior to anything you could dream of making with your own two hands

>spend months learning blacksmithing and weapon crafting
>you could have just grabbed a crowbar that is significantly more durable than anything you could hope to make in your forge

>spend months learning pottery for some reason
>you could have just picked up a fucking bucket or pot from one of the hundreds of houses and shops

the whole idea of this crafting system makes no fucking sense in the first place

>>725446163
It does when 90% of everything just up and disappeared when the zombies arrived

>>725446217
>>725446163
There really should be fixed/guaranteed spawns

I refuse to believe an obviously unlooted tool store doesn't have a fucking hammer lying around

It's insane that this scam slop is still around. I remember 10 years ago everyone getting hyped up by fake gameplay where you had thinking NPCs and a scenario would play out where you are taking care of your sick wife while an armed bandit enters the house and you have hundreds of options on how to deal with it.
All of it turned out to be fake and the game has nothing to show after all this time, yet the scam goes on.

>>725429589
They're trying to make "The" zombie game, they're trying to build a foundation in which any possible zombie survival scenario can be experienced.
In reality that means they've been fucking about with feature creep and not releasing anything meaty since Halo Reach was on the shelves of Blockbuster.

>>725424276 (OP)
>Game is called zombie project
>The zombies have broken code that prevents them from functioning properly
>This code has been broken for 7 years now
>Modders fixed it by adding a single line of text
>It's still broken in the base game and editing the file manually gets reverted every update as the file no longer matches the official one in verification
Drooling retard dev.

If this game had the depth in customization, character development and escalating danger of CDDA it would be the best game ever.

>>725439328
both

>>725446163
all this new bullshit is made specifically for the 0.05% of players that want to play on a forest-only map with no zombies
all because lemmy played modded minecraft one day and decided to turn PZ into something similar on a whim

>great foundations to expand upon
>players are satisfied with your proof of concept despite the whining
>game stays stagnant
I am reminded of Notch promising dworf style mechanics in MC but then said fuck it

>>725424506
I just realised Vein was related to the Dead Matter devs... now I kind of understand why the combat isn't very good. Or the zombies just don't really seemed that well fleshed out like PZ.

Are some people just desperate for a non isometric version of Project Zomboid? this either has some potential to improve or it's a scam. I don't know which.

>>725447330
>Are some people just desperate for a non isometric version of Project Zomboid
people are desperate for a good sandbox zombie game in general
this genre is completely cursed

All I've ever played in the zombie genre is CDDA. Zomboid sounds rather similar, does it do anything better than CDDA other than obviously the graphics?

I think this zomboid dev is one bad day away from having a nutty episode

>>725447735
Atmosphere
Sound design
Real time action gameplay
Handcrafted map, as opposed to randomly generated
No trans flags and vibrators
Easier difficulty (can be a pro or con depending on you)
But really visuals are the main advantage.

However CDDA has a lot more loot, better weapons and knight armor.

>>725447864
I thought the random map generation would be a major selling point over having the same maps all the time.

>>725447735
>than obviously the graphics?
I mean Zomboid isn't winning awards for being a looker considering it's visually Maxis The Sims 2000. I would say its draw is simply because all the combat is real time and all the decision making too. You don't get the liberty of thinking what you're going to do by turns.

>>725446163
>>you could have just grabbed a crowbar that is significantly more durable than anything you could hope to make in your forge
It's just shitty balance. Properly forged one-handed mace should mog any other weapons in all aspects beside range. Morgenstern would fix range issue, but it's somewhat unwieldy without practice.

>>725424276 (OP)
Fuck npcs, the game will become a fucking slog if they are implemented. I dont want to wasdte my time mollycoddling some atrificial morons when I could be looting.

>>725448008
No, a carefully handcrafted map full of unique locations is cooler, more memorable and more charming.
In CDDA you will encounter the same few locations a lot of times but with random loot and in different formations. Also the world is built on a large grid of building tiles so the towns are less natural than zomboids.

>>725446829
post that line, or never happened.

>>725448084
You can make a long mace with the same mace head as the one handed one. One of the hardest hitting weapons that still has reasonable weight.

>>725448189
I admit, i never have chance to use long mace personally, so i was assuming it's noticably slower than normal mace.

>>725424361
Cataclysm exists, be it Dark Days Ahead (main fork), Brigh Nights (more sci-fi fork) and Last Generation (removes Exodii, etc.). All better than Zomboid, with greater depth and more things to do.

>>725448150
I think the map generation was changed in experimental. Cities are a lot more natural now, as well as zombies now moving outside the reality bubble.

>>725447735
It's prettier and is real time, which creates a more immersive atmosphere. Everything else is worse, and sadly, Zomboid has nothing to do. It's easy to survive and that's about it. Nothing interesting to craft, no vehicle building, no end game "dungeons", no power progression from CBM's or mutations, no NPC's, no quests, no factions, no faction building, etc.

>>725448150
If we assume the same amount of quality content, whether the game has randomnization only adds replay value.

>>725424276 (OP)
I hate the new build I never craft and I never will. I'm playing to kill zombies and loot buildings not build a furnace. haven't even played since build 41

>>725448598
My problem is that crafting a mace is a grind where you need to spend hours reading books and leveling multiple skills and crafting junk you won't need until you get to the point where you can actually make maces and armor.
Then, you get bitten.

I can't get into CDDA. I just get anxious over long-term food and water sources and do not know what to do. Also traversing the long distances between rural places is very tedious and slow but going to cities is a death sentence unless you have solid medieval gear or guns.
Any help?

>>725448663
>>Then, you get bitten.
>He didn't knew
Kappa

>>725424276 (OP)
I don't think npcs would fix this game to be honest.

>>725434425
>extraction shooter.

>>725427251
That sounds like a fun idea. Go make it

all i really want is a redo on the qhole aound system. besically make every sound diagetic without exception. other than that its exactly what i want from a zombie apocalypse simulator.

>>725443272
>yeah? you've obviously mastered the combat and meeting your characters needs
It takes one day to clear out a building and set up a safehouse, what is there to do after that?

>over 10 years 'development' where over half their devlogs are announcing new hires
>4 years without a stable release
>4 years of shit being added to the game in a branch with NO multiplayer
>a whole year of no devlogs only to break the silence with "look who we hired"
>one of gaming's most rabid apologist communities on the internet but comments still get disabled on everything the devs post
>on top of all of this, the game is mediocre, sometimes outright frustrating and tedious despite all it's potential
i actually hate it at this point. it represents so many negative aspects of vidya

>>725449163
you live until you die

>>725428361
>but zomboid wants the inevitable THIS IS HOW YOU DIED ending
they're just wasting the possible "AND THIS IS HOW HUMANITY WAS REBORN" kino when you 'win'

>>725433734
>Hopefully them removing multiplayer is just them ironing it out, if not they are retarded
it's bern 4 years of "we're just gonna add a coupla things and get it working in MP for the stable build"
sickening that beta branch updates will prevent that early acess warning on your store page

>>725435280
fuck no
they need to fire everyone except the 5 people actually coding shit. they have ex-devs from every genre on their team for no reason at all besides namedropping (they still call PZ a 'passion project'), and all it's done is put too many cooks in the kitchen.

>>725439328
habitual liars

>>725448150
ah yes, the unique locations of copy-pasted suburbia

>>725440016
>You could import ten million Indians to Indie Stone's office tomorrow and nothing would happen
what an odd thing to say

>>725440330
3 extra seconds of safety if a horde hits your house.
manlier than curtains.

>>725442239
maybe the last 4 years of beta branch updates without MP have us worried that NPCs will be the only ones we can share our cooked-on-a-makeshift-stove rabbit stew with

>>725449762
>if a horde hits your house.

>>725444372
he kept asking other people to code their systems to work with NPCs, probably got answers like "'uuuughhhhh, like, not now? we're redoing the soundscape for the 5th time currently, ask me later. like, next year."

>>725445149
yes
>trading
>adding to their village and breeding them to get better traders
>golem farming
>antisemetic design

>>725447237
imagine if indie stone announced their days off like notch did

>>725449854
isn't there a helicopter event still? sends a group of em at you? only time my house was ever attacked

I played build 42 and the shoving feels awful, delayed and floaty.
Rolled back to build 41 after a few hours

>>725449854
yeah?
IF your house gets hit, your 20 mins of hammering nails gets you a whopping few extra seconds before BOOM BOOM CRASH. so worth it. great game.

>>725450282
they fucked combat with B42's first betas and it's been a constant problem in various different forms ever since.

>4 years with no stable release
>4 years of updates to a branch without multiplayer
i scoffed but it's actually true AND they went a year without even posting a devblog. unreal

>>725448756
Water is pretty free. Water purifying tablets exist, get a metal tank, go to pond of water, take water and apply tablet. Boom. You can also boil water, collect rain water and have a water purifier on a vehicle. Many houses also have water heaters, which have drinkable water for some time.

Food is a real problem, especially as you want to eat something enjoyable for morale. I like to make a smoking rack, kill animal, butcher and then smoke. It lasts for weeks just on its own, but longer in a fridge. Sealed food also exist and I try to always take it.

For travelsal, the first thing I personally do is get a vehicle. When you find a intact APC or Humvee, you convert that to your death mobile, through over time development. Keep the diesel engine, add the best electric engine you find, couple with large batteries and solar panels. Have a alternator and automatic switch for efficient traversal. Diesel recharges batteries, batteries power both light travel all the things on the vehicle.

Cities are really dangerous, yeah. Going at night is the strategy. Carry your bag and have a silent weapon on small move pocket, like holster or sling. Drop bag when you see zombie and take out weapon. With keybinds it's really quick. One strategy is to set a house aflame, which draws zombies, then loot the free places. In melee combat, make sure to be stepping backwards constantly after a strike, when you are faster than the zombie. Always try to force them to step on slow tiles, to get free hits.

>>725424361
does their game being literally stolen make that slightly less bad or worse because of how dumb that was

>>725426097
>Dude just do the same thing over and over again, stop asking for content in this 13yo early access game
Zomboid loses all of it's apeal as soon as you figure it out how to survive the first week, it's so easy after that.
Everytime i would spawn in a randon city, survive the start, get a randon place secure, start doing the gardening and water stuff and get bored after 2 weeks on the same save.

>>725450961
that was so long ago it's irrelevant. when the game was 2 years old and the supposed theft represented a year of work, it was bad.
if that lost year of work was anything like the last 5... that's a bit less serious now.

>>725445149
Blacksmith house my beloved

>>725424361
I ask the same thing about eurotruck.
How the fuck did nobody manage to just do a better version of these games but without retarded devs behind it?

The only zomboid clone that i know is called Humanitz, but it's still so crude it will take years to get on par with zomboid features.

>>725451457
because it's not easy to make it. Vampire survivor is easy as shit to copy now to put effort and create cities, items and textures takes a lot of work.

>>725424276 (OP)
Will we get NPCs in 2026?

>>725424471
vampire survivors is as simple as it gets, it's a skinner's box with a "game" attached to it

>>725451764
booty like that should give the zombies a higher chance of catching you

>>725451764
you'll be lucky if we get a stable release in 2026 at all

>>725451764
BOIIOIOIOIOIOINNGGGGGGG

>>725451571
Nothing is easy to make, that's not a excuse.
I thing the real answer is that these games have been on the market without competition for way too long
And know anyone who want's to compete have to first catch on in those 10+ years before the game launch and it's simple not feasible.

Humanitz is the best example of this, it's incredilbly promissing but they didn't got all the basics done when it launch so it died and nobody is going to stick around and hope it becomes good.

>>725451764
Fat chance lol
I don't know if we're even getting a B42 stable release with multiplayer until 2027

>>725424276 (OP)
Actually, we need LGBTQ+ and gays flags

>>725424276 (OP)
I don't understand why they are extending the retarded crafting system when you don't even need it.

Also i remember when they said they would never add smelting and stuff like they are now, the devs just add whatever the fuck they want rather then what the game actually needs.

>>725452487
Wait WHAT they censored profession titles for troons? lmao

>look guys I found the game that dethrones project zomboid
>it doesn't dethrone it
>it's just some shit survival craft valheim game with an equally boring direction as 7 days to die
Say what you will about PZ's shortcomings. But the amount of shills that will make out like they found something better is always pretty embarrassing, blatantly untrue and happens quite often. And perhaps arguably worse than those who might make excuses for the indie stone's shortcomings because there's nothing worse than those who are delusional enough to distort the popularity of PZ's concept. The argument might potentially be there for Zed Zone (despite still being miles behind PZ) or CDDA. But it's been slim pickings for a long time and nothing has changed that fact. I remember some chink shilling some mediocre pixelshit game called Revelation of Decay at Next Fest claiming that it had beaten Zomboid. Despite it stealing sounds from Minecraft and Terraria zombies it was totally high quality apparently. I can only be more slightly charitable to games like Dead State Reanimated or Urban Strife because not many games attempt CRPG depth.

>>725452487
Repairiraitor

>>725449616
>fuck no
you dont understand the job description.
they need a person to sort and prioritize their backlog, so that they stop getting 1 month into a dynamic NPCs or some shit (started in 2013 btw) and abandoning it for pottery/glass blowing.
there needs to be a person who's job it is to take all those various hundreds of ideas and rank them by bang-for-buck development time vs value to players.
I dont think they lack developers, they lack direction, the fact there's been like 4 re-writes now and they made a whole new lighting system instead of content is proof of this.

>>725452487
>they troonified the game
Damn i'm glad i didn't bought it at full price

I will never understand how you need to read a manual to understand how to hook up and turn on a generator. The player character in this game has brain damage.

man I just ended a 3 day run because I got slightly cocky.
low pop only sprinters is no joke, they flank you.

>here's your update BRO now go shovel some fucking clay
grim

>>725453418
>This
It's so retarded

The combat in the beta build is still so fuckin buggy.

>>725452640
Only game that comes close is SCUM which has NPCs now and soon mod support.
At least I hope it's soon, they finally announced they're working on official mod support though.

>>725430737
>throw dirt on the floor
>put potatoes in
>win

>>725424361
There are similar games like zed zone and another game that I forget but not same.
The main reason is that it's a bad formula. Can you imagine a game that's half balanced for multiplayer and half for single player? That's realistic in all the hard ways only? That is extremely grindy in unbalanced skills and permadeath. That only has 1 enemy type. Don't forget a wiki game as well, that +75% is actually +300% because base exp is 25%. I was hoping they would lean into abiotic factor crafting instead they added pottery.
>>725427579
>surviving against all odds
For the first some hours, then you get competent at the game. Surviving is easy, then boring. Deaths come from being reckless rather that the difficulty.
>>725450254
Only if you get spotted, only possible if you're outside, It's a 1 time event. You can set it to repeating. But is it fun? It just makes it so you listen to the radio every morning ish and stay home if you hear it's coming that day.

>>725453418
>autistic levels of details for health and nutrition
>most basic grindy video game garbage for skills and leveling
I wish books unlocked recipes instead of merely lowering the amount of random furniture I have to disassemble before miraculously learning how stairs work.

>>725454747
>autistic levels of details for health and nutrition
more like retarded cause it doesn't work

>>725424276 (OP)
npcs cant fix the game if everything else is halfbaked and/or boring

>>725454979
I have no idea why you would play with more zombies rather than harder zombies.
sprinters with eagle vision and door opening is 1000x more interesting than 10000 shamblers.

install zombolewd

New character.
So far, he has survived only one day, gotten some kickass loot with good RNG and secured his base.

>>725426097
Zomboid IS boring. And there isn't anything to do. Most of the goals you makeup will just be basebuilding, looting, or grinding skills. There is nothing to do.

>>725453927
Scum isn't what I'm looking for. Very few games meet the criteria. I'm not interested in garbage like Surroundead either. PZ is the only game that places emphasises on harder combat against zombies in a way that makes sense. And that's traditionally in regards to melee. Because on the other hand the shooting of a firearm is less than stellar. Also a lot of moronic devs think Zomboid's brutal difficulty is a bad thing or should be left in the past, very few see its ideas as positive because it would potentially alienate a player base. Hence we have idiots constantly talking about why newer zombie games 'fixed zomboid' because they don't make scratches or damage dangerous at all, among other things that make this part of the game a background threat so PVP can prioritised or something.

Game needs special zombies and way more guns/ammo and car mechanics like cataclysm. Hostile weather would be cool too. Love the comfy feeling of hunkering down indoors whole there's a poison gas storm outside

>>725455327
replace
>wasting hours slowly killing hundreds of shambler
with
>wasting hours slowly killing a couple of dozen sprinters by baiting 2 or 3 at time to not get overwhelmed
genius

>>725456094
I prefer that this game is more grounded in reality. We already have so many zombie games with special Zed's and whatnot.

game needs skinwalkers that roam at night making human sounds and hunting for the player by looking for evidence they've been there (blood, trash, structures)
forcing you to hide and cover your tracks.

>>725439328
both

>>725455327
artifical difficulty that go against game lore

>>725456094
no... Special zombies is the most retard shit ever. 4 zombies are already dangerous enough to put you down.

>>725446163
it's obvious they designed it around multiplayer which is stupid because servers just use item respawn and B42 doesn't even have multiplayer.

>>725447864
how do you even play CDDA? it seems like you just instantly die the moment anything happens

>>725424276 (OP)
why the fuck would they do that lol they already got paid

>>725451881
>skinner's box
>'s

didn't they have a melty recently? I might be confusing it with something else
I think I've played PZ every 3-4 years across its lifespan just to see how things are progressing

remember when development delayed by a bomb exploding in their house?
lol
lmao

>>725460594
wasn't their laptops stolen with the uncommitted source code or something?

>>725453480
I will be happy when I find funny hat.

>>725424276 (OP)
Part 1 of NPCs (whatever that means) will be the next big update aka Build 43. They should be done with Build 42 pretty soon (~3-6 months)

rape npcs feature

>>725459005
this's you

>>725426097
First off, NPCs were promised way back in 2013-2014 and now ten years later we still don’t have them. There is no fucking excuse for that considering some Russian guy was able to make a mod with dynamic NPCs. Second, Project Zomboid does the sandbox experience the worst out of all the recent sandbox game. If you compare it to other sandbox games like Mount&Blade or Kenshi. Those games do a far better job when it comes to the sandbox gameplay. I’m both of those games you have to grind up your skills just like project zomboid but unlike zombies the game actually reflects the progression the player achieves. In mount&blade, the player can clearly see the difference in gameplay and new gameplay options open up when they improve a skill such as your party gets larger, you deal more damage,NPCs start interacting with you more and more quests/player options open up. Same goes for Kenshi. Project zomboid on the other hand doesn’t do anything other than watching a green bar fill up until the lvl up jingle plays. All that gets you if just improved furniture or you do those same tasks slightly faster. And again you just continue watching the bar fill up over and over again without any real gameplay impact. It also doesn’t help that project zomboid makes leveling up those skills so boring and tedious that it sucks the fun out of the game. Also the gameplay loop sucks ass after you survive past 1-2 weeks and then you realize that the game has no content past those first two weeks unlike Kenshi and Mount&blade which opens up more as you progress.

Faggots like you are the reason why retarded devs like indie stone get away with half assing games.

>>725454979
This doesn't work anymore in B42 all zombies have randomized speeds and most shamble faster than normal walking on top of new muscle strain mechanic so you gas out and get sore before you can take out 100+ zombies now.

Also weapons are giga brittle now

>>725460329
So you basically tried 1 patch and 1 unstable branch?

>>725451764
mod ?

>>725468601
this means that webm related is even worse now because you have to fight new retarded mechanics that tire you out and break weapons with sharpness
amazing

>>725468794
I bought this game on desura back when I was in college, before it went to steam greenlight
currently, I have 450 hours on steam and played those hours on and off during 4-5 "sessions" on different patches before I got bored
I got my money's worth, but this game has so much wasted potential

>>725424276 (OP)
>Going on a full year since b42 unstable released
>Multiplayer still missing
I can't wait to go a decade without multiplayer when they finally add NPCs.

>>725448254
Not everybody wants to play a text based game with ASCII art lol

>>725440270
The game is fucking lonely and I don't have any friends who own PZ to do multiplayer with. I want a real TWD experience. I want to get a bunch of npcs and make a fortress and have other npcs attack my fortress and I have to defend against them. The game is so easy that NPCs attacking you would create a constant threat aside from the zombies. I don't need quests, just give me NPCs that aren't completely retarded and can help me automate tasks.

this game, npcs specifically, is what has convinced me that people have no idea what they really want and will latch onto a thing they think they want without being able to conceptualize hidden consequences.

>>725466456
nope

>>725443270
Melee works fine in Humanitz against most enemies you just have to pay attention to enemy attack patterns. The only guys that are a problem are the big exploders, the bulky sprinter guys, and bandits.

>>725479382
>The only guys that are a problem are all high level enemies.

>>725479885
You don't run into those zombie variants very often and when bandits are around they're in a secluded group so you can prepare accordingly. You can have two main weapon slots and a pistol slot for a reason,

>>725451457
ETS2 actually gets regular updates
But I could potentially see a competitor focusing on the asian market

I dont like most of what is being added in 42 except the lighting. I might just consider 41 to be the complete version of the game.

>>725446163
The new crafting stuff is tailored for the people who want to do stuff like wilderness challenges. Its a very niche thing so its a waste of time in my opinion.

>>725435752
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cMXNJ3zkSiE

>>725475823
Sorry to tell you anon but people have been “latching” on npcs for project zomboid since 2013. Can’t blame them since the devs promised them over a decade ago.