Vedui
Active member
With in reality just one proper Alpha 17 video from Madmole, we're left with ... an information gap. Still, a week ago I was thinking about some of the good things I saw in Joel's play. But I also noted some things I had concerns with. Not necessarily something which sucks and makes me rage, but things that I'd hope gets another pass through and either with more information released, or tweaked after discussions with the community.
Again I want to re-iterate, I know very well tonnes of new things have been mentioned as being included, just that not seeing that (yet?) in a Madmole playthrough video, I hesitate to comment on things that might or might not be in, and might work one way or another but being unknown until it's shown in a recent build.
Lengthier video talk-through -->
1) No Corpse Loot?
I heard a lot of pros, and cons on that one. My main one is that killing gets less satisfying if there is no loot, and reduces resource gathering to looting containers. The problem is that having zombies with loot is not less, but more realistic than magically respawning containers. And the world, especially playing with some friends, can get quickly pretty empty of loot if you set respawns to "never".
In A16 vs A15, I also found myself enjoying killing and looting zombies more in A15, as the loot was better. It was rebalanced, but I think reduced way too much.
2) Stunned vs DEAD
With no looting, it seemed very hard at many times to see if a zombie was truly dead, or just stunned. That was always a bit of a problem previously, one would hover over and see if the "loot corpse" would show, and if not, whack again. Now, with no looting, you won't know.
Solution seems straight forward though, give the zombie a slight movement or twitching. It's stunned after all, not destroyed.
3) Clumsy Melee
This I have to say really concerned me in earlier A17 showcases, the melee seemed way clumsy, not fluid, the hitboxes and animations seemed off. In the D1 video, it seemed as bad. It just doesn't look or feel right. I'm not sure how it could be fixed though, but relooking hitboxes, maybe even the animation (it feels like you hit 50 cm in front, when the zombie is 1 meter away and gets damaged). Am I the only one who felt it didn't quite look like a satisfying melee the way it currently worked?
4) Too few Zombies!
This was a problem in A16, and seems to be equally bad in A17. Watch Joel's video as he wanders around and he seems maybe a couple or three roaming zombies, the rest all seem POI spawns. We really need a way to increase this, even at expense of performance. Joel walks through the town, and there's no zombies. It's a ghost town, not a zombie town. Maybe that's TPF vision, but I loved in A15 and earlier being able to boost the spawns to see a lot of roamers I had to destroy in towns before I looted.
5) Overfocus on Graphics
I love new graphics stuff, blocks, hd textures, lighting, objects and what have you. But it seems as if 50 % of the effort was spent on graphical improvements, with 25 % on POI work, 15 % on tweaking existing systems (health/stamina, loot, etc), and 10 % new gameplay content like the jeep/mc. Appearances, which doesn't necessarily mean that's how they spent the time btw. Nothing wrong with looking prettier, but if it plays effectively the same as A16, it's nice for new players picking the game up, but why would A16 players go back to a prettier A16 which doesn't have gameplay extending content like bandits, npc communities, new electricity items, new zombies and so on. Probably not, is what I keep hearing from people.
So yeah, if A16 looked like A17, I think it'd been great. But I have a big concern that people "barely" waited 12 months for A17, and with insufficient new content extending gameplay, even fewer will consider waiting another 12 months just to see something interesting enough.
Loving the game, but Single Player has it's limitations, and I want to have people playing with in multiplayer too, and everyone seems to be running away
/Vedui
Again I want to re-iterate, I know very well tonnes of new things have been mentioned as being included, just that not seeing that (yet?) in a Madmole playthrough video, I hesitate to comment on things that might or might not be in, and might work one way or another but being unknown until it's shown in a recent build.
Lengthier video talk-through -->
I heard a lot of pros, and cons on that one. My main one is that killing gets less satisfying if there is no loot, and reduces resource gathering to looting containers. The problem is that having zombies with loot is not less, but more realistic than magically respawning containers. And the world, especially playing with some friends, can get quickly pretty empty of loot if you set respawns to "never".
In A16 vs A15, I also found myself enjoying killing and looting zombies more in A15, as the loot was better. It was rebalanced, but I think reduced way too much.
2) Stunned vs DEAD
With no looting, it seemed very hard at many times to see if a zombie was truly dead, or just stunned. That was always a bit of a problem previously, one would hover over and see if the "loot corpse" would show, and if not, whack again. Now, with no looting, you won't know.
Solution seems straight forward though, give the zombie a slight movement or twitching. It's stunned after all, not destroyed.
3) Clumsy Melee
This I have to say really concerned me in earlier A17 showcases, the melee seemed way clumsy, not fluid, the hitboxes and animations seemed off. In the D1 video, it seemed as bad. It just doesn't look or feel right. I'm not sure how it could be fixed though, but relooking hitboxes, maybe even the animation (it feels like you hit 50 cm in front, when the zombie is 1 meter away and gets damaged). Am I the only one who felt it didn't quite look like a satisfying melee the way it currently worked?
4) Too few Zombies!
This was a problem in A16, and seems to be equally bad in A17. Watch Joel's video as he wanders around and he seems maybe a couple or three roaming zombies, the rest all seem POI spawns. We really need a way to increase this, even at expense of performance. Joel walks through the town, and there's no zombies. It's a ghost town, not a zombie town. Maybe that's TPF vision, but I loved in A15 and earlier being able to boost the spawns to see a lot of roamers I had to destroy in towns before I looted.
5) Overfocus on Graphics
I love new graphics stuff, blocks, hd textures, lighting, objects and what have you. But it seems as if 50 % of the effort was spent on graphical improvements, with 25 % on POI work, 15 % on tweaking existing systems (health/stamina, loot, etc), and 10 % new gameplay content like the jeep/mc. Appearances, which doesn't necessarily mean that's how they spent the time btw. Nothing wrong with looking prettier, but if it plays effectively the same as A16, it's nice for new players picking the game up, but why would A16 players go back to a prettier A16 which doesn't have gameplay extending content like bandits, npc communities, new electricity items, new zombies and so on. Probably not, is what I keep hearing from people.
So yeah, if A16 looked like A17, I think it'd been great. But I have a big concern that people "barely" waited 12 months for A17, and with insufficient new content extending gameplay, even fewer will consider waiting another 12 months just to see something interesting enough.
Loving the game, but Single Player has it's limitations, and I want to have people playing with in multiplayer too, and everyone seems to be running away
/Vedui
