ShadowMoses1324
New member
Okay. I'm a long-time player of 7 days, I'm not going to talk about how many hours I have in the game, because I'm not that guy. But what I will say is that I've loved this game since the 5th release, and this is my top played game on my steam account. AKA, I'm not a noob. I've given many times to TFP, in the form of having bought 8+ copies of the game, and I was a huge supporter, and would still love to be, but I'll be honest. I've put quite a decent amount of time into the 17 experimenteal and I'm incredibly disappointed, like, to the point where I am near about to uninstall, and forget this game, while never recommending it again. Now, before I start, Yes, I know it's not the full release, and No, I'm not complaining about difficulty. There are just some things I've found thus far, that make the game quite nearly unplayable. I am also well aware of the turds that have dropped in the past as far as first releases of alpha builds, and am also aware of the fact that it is a huge build and there are going to be issues. No, I'm not being unfair, and No, I'm not just complaining in hopes that TFP will be catering to my own play-style.
So, Lets start with the good. The game looks amazing. I love how crisp everything looks, and how, while updating the texture resolutions of most of the items, none have really changed. I'm very impressed with how this is done. I love that there has been more focus on the POI's, so they're not just cookie-cutter, run in, loot, and out in 20 seconds with little to no danger. I also love the influx in sleepers and other zombies in the POI's. This adds a sense of danger and adventure to the game, while also, whether inadvertent or not, creating a sort of tier system to the different POI's. I love the new Leveling system, and while there are issues with it, that are game breaking, It's largely all-inclusive and far more intuitive, eliminating a lot of sitting and reading in your house. The loot generation is better, IMO, the extra crafting tiers are excellent, and overall play has changed enough to get me excited about re-learning the game all over again. And lets not forget the Arrows now. ./purrrrr. I love seeing where I hit the unsuspecting Z's with my bow, mixed with the new stealth system. While also being able to collect my arrows from corpses. And lastly, I haven't gotten to them yet because I can't stomach leveling this far in the state that the game is in, The focus placed on the vehicles. Excellent job on a lot of it guys. I love it.
Now, onto the bad. I'll try to keep it in categories, and there may be a couple of bug reports in this thread as well, sorry, but I'll just try to make one all-inclusive post here. I have two main gripes. Like, game-breakers for me, which kind of nestle into eachother, so I'm going to try to lump em together.
The leveling system's impact on early game. I know, I'm riding a fine line on whether or not I'm whining about how hard the game is, but bear with me, I'll expand. My first meeting with A17 was bittersweet. Tying critical damage via skill based actions, is asinine. I should absolutely not have to put points into perception, for my projectile attacks to deal more damage to a zombie, if I have the skill to shoot the Z in the head, I'm sorry for being a ♥♥♥♥ here, but it should be dead. (Unless it has a helmet or something on, then I'd get it.) The only thing that should cause any difference in this should be the quality of the bow, in terms of draw weight and what not. But when I see a zombie shambling towards me with 8 arrows in it's skull and it's still not down for the count, there's more than one issue there. in fact, hiding any rudimentary function of life behind a skill point is completely counter-productive when you're shooting for immersion. (Strength, in this sense, with melee weapons, makes a bit more sense, because if you're a tiny guy or gal' trying to beat in a zombie skull with the blunt end of a screwdriver, then obviously you're not going to do a whole lot. )
On the other side of this coin, the other, and for me, the main game breaker is the food and water system. Okay, you made food harder to get ahold of. I'm okay with that. But here's the problem. Swinging a club, burns hunger and stamina. Stamina is used in everything, but the only way to get it back, is to use it to clear a house, in hopes of possibly getting enough food or water to replenish maybe 25% of what you've used trying to get said food. Out of 4 total fresh starts that I've done in A17, only one of them did not lock me into an endless hunger loop, (and just to twist the knife further, when I loaded this save today, a tree had grown in the center of my house that I couldn't knock down, and it covered up my loot box where I was storing everything, so I had nothing all over again....). What's worse, is that I'm about to have people tell me, "Well, you can get food from other sources." yes. You are correct. But lets explore this for a moment. You find corn, yet have no cooking skill. Sure, you can eat it. But you have a 20-ish% chance of food poisoning, which puts you in an even more dire situation. Potatoes are worse, clocking in at a 30% FP rating, while only yielding 2% of your hunger. Oh, and lest I forget. You can't use them without a pot or grill, so, unless you get insanely lucky in the beginning and loot a pot in a car or house that you've spawned in, then you're boned. Animals aren't much better either. Early game, you have a stone axe. Use the axe on your first kill to get a bone to make a shiv, for more drops off of the next animal you kill. So. Basics right? Well, not really. Because if you consider how terribly uncommon wildlife is in the game for some reason, (Which has been a thing over the past few Alpha Builds, and I'm okay with that,) You'll have zombies to kill while looking for the next animal. Which means, you're draining more stamina and hunger. Oh, and for more fun, you finally get yourself about 20 raw meat, then go to cook it, and realize that it takes 5 meat to make the lowest tier of food in the game, which only generates 10% hunger at the most. All while draining your hydration. So, you have to double time your search for water, in order to counteract the whole ordeal. So, to the hunter-gatherer argument, I disagree fully, and go back to the fact that looting is about the only way to gain enough food, early game. Also, in a half of a day, you can literally starve to the point of uselessness? For a game that's trying to gain some ground on realism, it's sure not doing a good job on the basics like hunger... Thirst, I could understand. I can go a few days without eating, Personally. Which means a digital toon on a game shouldn't have an issue with dwindling stamina, at least not in the severity that this game in it's current state lets on. Food is horrendously unbalanced, and needs to be assessed, because This single thing, breaks the whole game, and it's just an absolute asinine way of hampering a character. Not even going into which I think it a bug, where after you die, your hunger stays where it was when you ate the ol' turd sammich.
Smaller issues I've discovered, are with personal opinion. Level 20 (Or 21, if you're spending points to counteract the other broken elements in the game,) to make a forge is just too bloody much. For the love of god, make it to day 5, just looting to eat.... there is no time for Zombie killing to level, and if there is no leveling, there is no progression. It's pretty straight forward, especially on such a pivotal piece of equipment. Having to unlock simple cooking recipes with a skill point is also dumb. Any idiot can grill a piece of meat.... or boil it.
The quality system is far less rewarding, and the straight 1-5 or 6 levels of the different qualities, takes a lot of the reward from looting, and crafting, and this for me, is one of the biggest letdowns. I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel accomplished just seeing the difference between a 400 and a 425 club I find in a trash pile while out and about looting. or when I can craft that level 450 after grinding levels for just that tiny increase in damage, regardless of the color quality. If you Take that away, who cares? You get an orange club, you level until you make a green. It's super lame, and needs to be changed back. There's no random nature to it, as it's basically either you have it or you don't.... This just gets worse when you start building yourself a diamond plated death-stick later on in the game. Y'know, sorting through endless lootables for that one gun part that replaces your crappy one, (And by crappy, I mean 1-2 point difference,) It makes you feel like your gun is yours. It's a feeling of accomplishment. That's no longer there, and that ruins it for me, Personally.
(Body is too long on OP, Continue reading in first comment.)
- - - Updated - - -
Now, lastly, on the heels of that last point, I'm going to address the Death punishment length... If you're going to make it harder to survive, and punish us for dying.... for christs sake, lower the amount of time that it takes for the punishment debuff to wear off and for good measure, lower the penalty... after one death, you may as well put on a football helmet, drool on yourself and attempt to mario jump on everything that crosses your path, because that will be far more effective than you actually giving a damn and trying. Oh, and 60 min debuff... Most in-game days on default, I believe are 48 min. I'll leave you all to do the math on that.
So, Lets start with the good. The game looks amazing. I love how crisp everything looks, and how, while updating the texture resolutions of most of the items, none have really changed. I'm very impressed with how this is done. I love that there has been more focus on the POI's, so they're not just cookie-cutter, run in, loot, and out in 20 seconds with little to no danger. I also love the influx in sleepers and other zombies in the POI's. This adds a sense of danger and adventure to the game, while also, whether inadvertent or not, creating a sort of tier system to the different POI's. I love the new Leveling system, and while there are issues with it, that are game breaking, It's largely all-inclusive and far more intuitive, eliminating a lot of sitting and reading in your house. The loot generation is better, IMO, the extra crafting tiers are excellent, and overall play has changed enough to get me excited about re-learning the game all over again. And lets not forget the Arrows now. ./purrrrr. I love seeing where I hit the unsuspecting Z's with my bow, mixed with the new stealth system. While also being able to collect my arrows from corpses. And lastly, I haven't gotten to them yet because I can't stomach leveling this far in the state that the game is in, The focus placed on the vehicles. Excellent job on a lot of it guys. I love it.
Now, onto the bad. I'll try to keep it in categories, and there may be a couple of bug reports in this thread as well, sorry, but I'll just try to make one all-inclusive post here. I have two main gripes. Like, game-breakers for me, which kind of nestle into eachother, so I'm going to try to lump em together.
The leveling system's impact on early game. I know, I'm riding a fine line on whether or not I'm whining about how hard the game is, but bear with me, I'll expand. My first meeting with A17 was bittersweet. Tying critical damage via skill based actions, is asinine. I should absolutely not have to put points into perception, for my projectile attacks to deal more damage to a zombie, if I have the skill to shoot the Z in the head, I'm sorry for being a ♥♥♥♥ here, but it should be dead. (Unless it has a helmet or something on, then I'd get it.) The only thing that should cause any difference in this should be the quality of the bow, in terms of draw weight and what not. But when I see a zombie shambling towards me with 8 arrows in it's skull and it's still not down for the count, there's more than one issue there. in fact, hiding any rudimentary function of life behind a skill point is completely counter-productive when you're shooting for immersion. (Strength, in this sense, with melee weapons, makes a bit more sense, because if you're a tiny guy or gal' trying to beat in a zombie skull with the blunt end of a screwdriver, then obviously you're not going to do a whole lot. )
On the other side of this coin, the other, and for me, the main game breaker is the food and water system. Okay, you made food harder to get ahold of. I'm okay with that. But here's the problem. Swinging a club, burns hunger and stamina. Stamina is used in everything, but the only way to get it back, is to use it to clear a house, in hopes of possibly getting enough food or water to replenish maybe 25% of what you've used trying to get said food. Out of 4 total fresh starts that I've done in A17, only one of them did not lock me into an endless hunger loop, (and just to twist the knife further, when I loaded this save today, a tree had grown in the center of my house that I couldn't knock down, and it covered up my loot box where I was storing everything, so I had nothing all over again....). What's worse, is that I'm about to have people tell me, "Well, you can get food from other sources." yes. You are correct. But lets explore this for a moment. You find corn, yet have no cooking skill. Sure, you can eat it. But you have a 20-ish% chance of food poisoning, which puts you in an even more dire situation. Potatoes are worse, clocking in at a 30% FP rating, while only yielding 2% of your hunger. Oh, and lest I forget. You can't use them without a pot or grill, so, unless you get insanely lucky in the beginning and loot a pot in a car or house that you've spawned in, then you're boned. Animals aren't much better either. Early game, you have a stone axe. Use the axe on your first kill to get a bone to make a shiv, for more drops off of the next animal you kill. So. Basics right? Well, not really. Because if you consider how terribly uncommon wildlife is in the game for some reason, (Which has been a thing over the past few Alpha Builds, and I'm okay with that,) You'll have zombies to kill while looking for the next animal. Which means, you're draining more stamina and hunger. Oh, and for more fun, you finally get yourself about 20 raw meat, then go to cook it, and realize that it takes 5 meat to make the lowest tier of food in the game, which only generates 10% hunger at the most. All while draining your hydration. So, you have to double time your search for water, in order to counteract the whole ordeal. So, to the hunter-gatherer argument, I disagree fully, and go back to the fact that looting is about the only way to gain enough food, early game. Also, in a half of a day, you can literally starve to the point of uselessness? For a game that's trying to gain some ground on realism, it's sure not doing a good job on the basics like hunger... Thirst, I could understand. I can go a few days without eating, Personally. Which means a digital toon on a game shouldn't have an issue with dwindling stamina, at least not in the severity that this game in it's current state lets on. Food is horrendously unbalanced, and needs to be assessed, because This single thing, breaks the whole game, and it's just an absolute asinine way of hampering a character. Not even going into which I think it a bug, where after you die, your hunger stays where it was when you ate the ol' turd sammich.
Smaller issues I've discovered, are with personal opinion. Level 20 (Or 21, if you're spending points to counteract the other broken elements in the game,) to make a forge is just too bloody much. For the love of god, make it to day 5, just looting to eat.... there is no time for Zombie killing to level, and if there is no leveling, there is no progression. It's pretty straight forward, especially on such a pivotal piece of equipment. Having to unlock simple cooking recipes with a skill point is also dumb. Any idiot can grill a piece of meat.... or boil it.
The quality system is far less rewarding, and the straight 1-5 or 6 levels of the different qualities, takes a lot of the reward from looting, and crafting, and this for me, is one of the biggest letdowns. I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel accomplished just seeing the difference between a 400 and a 425 club I find in a trash pile while out and about looting. or when I can craft that level 450 after grinding levels for just that tiny increase in damage, regardless of the color quality. If you Take that away, who cares? You get an orange club, you level until you make a green. It's super lame, and needs to be changed back. There's no random nature to it, as it's basically either you have it or you don't.... This just gets worse when you start building yourself a diamond plated death-stick later on in the game. Y'know, sorting through endless lootables for that one gun part that replaces your crappy one, (And by crappy, I mean 1-2 point difference,) It makes you feel like your gun is yours. It's a feeling of accomplishment. That's no longer there, and that ruins it for me, Personally.
(Body is too long on OP, Continue reading in first comment.)
- - - Updated - - -
Now, lastly, on the heels of that last point, I'm going to address the Death punishment length... If you're going to make it harder to survive, and punish us for dying.... for christs sake, lower the amount of time that it takes for the punishment debuff to wear off and for good measure, lower the penalty... after one death, you may as well put on a football helmet, drool on yourself and attempt to mario jump on everything that crosses your path, because that will be far more effective than you actually giving a damn and trying. Oh, and 60 min debuff... Most in-game days on default, I believe are 48 min. I'll leave you all to do the math on that.
