C'mon what happened to the brilliant ideas?
Alpha 16 is the best. All downhill from there.
- Thread starter Batman
- Start date
Roland
Community Moderator
Loved wellness. But, come on. You aren’t willing to admit the constraints that any death penalty adds to the game? They changed it from a system that made you have to work to recover what you had to one that only increases over time. Nothing forced.
Another easy one. Forcing people to change clothes when crossing a biome border is…..a constraint. Again, I have no bias against it but I also am not going to pretend that it didn’t bother lots of players who looked at temperature as tedious and unnecessarily constraining.
EvilPolygons
Survivor
This is one of my most missed features.Regardless, the constraints many other people complained about was the necessary clean up and the graphical ugliness of the gore piles.
Gore piles sound good in theory, but in practice they're kind of terrible. They stack in all sorts of weird buggy ways and generally don't behave like you'd expect corpses to behave. There are a couple of mods that bring them back, and it's easy to see why they were ditched.
Roland
Community Moderator
As soon as you make some blocks more stable than others people feel constrained to ignore the less stable blocks and build only with the best and then complain that they are forced to do so.
Adjustments are coming and trust me when I say that even if the changes are to your liking they will be to others’ disliking and they will feel like the devs are infringing on their playstyle.
And force players to wait the night out in their bases because they are convinced going out is certain death? Life risking nights would result in the same complaints as life risking storms.
Roland
Community Moderator
Not so much of a change than a wish for improved animation. Making zombies tougher to kill and faster and dumber or just single-minded without variance in their AI tasks would be a change and not one everyone would agree with. Bullet sponges aren’t popular with everyone and plenty would view classic zombies as pretty boring enemies. Making it all optional would be great but as we’ve seen recently, even making something optional can be viewed negatively by bitter people…lol
Roland
Community Moderator
Now you’re getting it. I won’t go through the rest but rest assured that whatever you view as freer and more immersive and challenging gameplay, others will view as constraining, artificial, tedium. And when you stop posting because you’re happy they will start posting because now TFP is obviously headed in the wrong direction.
zztong
Hunter
[Gore Blocks]
This is one of my most missed features.
I don't recall playing with that feature. It sounds neat. So it wasn't implemented like terrain? If not, I wonder if implementing it like terrain would make it feasible. I mean, the game will add terrain now, such as when a building or mine collapses. We just don't have a "gore" terrain block.
Oh, that's the system where your max health and stamina got reduced by 10 after a death. I remember it, plus saw it when I played A16 to remember it a couple of weeks ago.
I remember thinking "this is neat." Then later, "but it wouldn't be popular with most players; I'd probably turn it off." Then finally thinking, "it would be a neat option for more-hardcore players but not those that want perma-death. That is, they want something more like "long-term suffering with the possibility of redemption."
Perhaps TFP could consider it as an optional setting for that mound of possible options to be considered later.
I recall there's some very real limits in the number of blocks that can be defined and I think new materials chew up a bunch of those, so I could see why there was some consolidation in the material types.
With my recent A16 replay, I recall thinking "I have to stand in a lake (or in a POI) for 5 minutes to cool down." I was thinking how I missed heat stroke being part of the game, but then also thinking "this is kind of like waiting on a storm to end." To me, this speaks of possible options for players to select: Some want it, some miss it, some don't want it, some won't miss it.
But I'm not sure the original post is wanting a reason to stay in their base. I think the original post seeks a challenge.
Roland
Community Moderator
The zombie model changed to a corpse block which then changed to a blood colored terrain block. They looked okay when connected to other terrain but just like terrain does when adjacent or above player crafted blocks…no bueno. Especially above spike traps they looked like garbage and when you hit them they would shrink and sometimes you’d miss the final tiny piece and you’d end up with little dorito chips floating and confounding block placement.
They were great fun during horde night since they would pile up as you killed and cause zombies to possibly crest your wall or reach your perch but it’s all fun and games until it’s time to clean it all up.
Iperitas
Refugee
Few pipebombs, cheap and effective if you don't want extra mats that came from gore blocks.This is one of my most missed features.
So for some people it could be optional if it si good for most, or not? For me it was nice logical mechanic. Not gamebreaking when I don't have it, but I still miss it. Now with more recipes and ability to make our own caned food it would make more sense to have caned food while you travel further away from your base. And if you found smelly food or mats on your looting trip, you had the option to either take it, or leave it somehwere you coul pick up later. Maybe it could attract small amount of zombies or not. Or you could choose to take it and make your trip more challenging or you would run with it back home with extra attracted zombies and you hoped that your base defenses or future NPC's could save you in time. (you threw away so good mechanics that could make better sandbox stories
)Death penalty teaches players to avoid death. Before that was added to the game I evem my self was using broken glass as a teleport. But since Wellness was added I tried to attempt 0 deaths playthrough. Or at least minimal death count. On the other hand if you kept your wellness high, then you would be more sucessfull to not die. Also combined with smell, if you had to go on long trip only with canned food that would not keep your wellness high, then you would naturaly and logicaly loose your wellness while you are out. That makes sense. In case you will ever add NPC's to the game, then the same mechanic would constrain that NPC to be send to very long mission if they had too low wellness. Or they would have to have enough rest and recovery time before they could be send again...
I did not mind changing clothes when I went from winter to desert. It was logical. Now by the same logic you are forcing us to change armor on different tasks. And if you had highest quality clothing and you balanced it right, then most of the time you didn't had to change clothing. And that was nice goal for endgame to collect and asemble best combination of clothing and mods. (temperature mods were inprooving armor stats back then)
So if you shoot a zombie and he ducks to dodge your bulet that was not intentionaly added as inprooved animation? That was not in earlier versions. It was added probably 5 years ago, when you added Sledgehammer, that was also OP and is still OP even after few nerfs, because that is only weapon that no zombie can dodge. I don't like to play with ranged weapons anymore. I used to like it, or I try it in endgame when I have several storage boxes with ammo that I saved with my sledgehammer playthrough and then that BS movements system of zombies does not bother me that much anymore. And for those that don't like bullet sponges, they can still play od nomad, or warrior. And if clasic zombies are for someone as boring enemies, then why would they play a zombie survival game?
So basicaly if I want all of that stuff that I mentioned back in the game, then I have to play older versions and probably A16 is for players like me the best version. I just hope that someone could mod there trader quests to A16, because that is one of the best things added post A16 for me and I hope it will get expanded in future to something like guilds and not removed like many other good things in this game.
Iperitas
Refugee
I know that many people use different logic, but I used most of the time reinforced concrete. Only when I wanted to build very extended bridges, then I used thrusting layer covered from all sides with reinforced concrete, that would give me extra stability to have that bridge extended by few more blocks without support. I really felt like master builder in that older versions of the game. Whe had something that is called "high ceiling of the skill" (I am not native englis speaker, but I think it is something like that) and it was nice thing to show off if you spend too much time in this game tinkering last details and cool mechanics. As far as I rememember most player build bases used reinforced concrete, because it was ''intentional sweet spot" best durability, in some version it degraded to basic concrete and almost best stability for support.
I believe that most of the players will like the changes to biome challenges. Not one of my many friends that play this game from 2 to 12 years are hoping for curent biome challenges to stay in same form. I almost always hear, that it is interesting for first playthrough, but anoying since second.
To this day some players stay in their bases during the night, because they got used to play like this at the begining. Game was propagated in early videos in this way. That you should prepare during the day when zombies just walk, for the night when zombies run. This was one of the core mechanics of this game. Maybe I messed it up little bit when I made one tutorial in A8 how to kill zombies during the night, but you made them faster next patch and my tutorial was pointless, but I liked that. So yes, nights should be really scary again, that only the most experienced or crazy players would dare to go outside. And if you stayed outside looting too long and you did not watched your time, then you will have to run for your life. Or camp on top of some building where you will fight for your life. I remember it happen several times to me alone or with my friend. We choped down stairs in some house that zombies would not get to us so easily, but it would just slow them dowln little bit, because they would make therir way eventualy when they found out that we are there. But we still tried to stay in sneak as long as possible, eat all smelly food or throw it away, put on a fire, to keep us warm from cold night, stay under the roof or build it in case it started to rain/snow!!! All of that was taken away and you say that there was no survival in earlier versions?
Iperitas
Refugee
Now I remembered how interesting mining used to be. Some very long time ago we used to have tungsteen in game. And to mine a tungsteen ore you had to dig very deep. It was quite nice mechanic, that for best reward you have to make the most effort. Some mods are still playing with it, and I hoped that ores will get rework in this game some time later. But instead of expanding this with more ores beig avariable in different depths or biomes, you simplyfied it and removed tungsteen. I still hope that it will come back, but I am afraid that we will get something like learn by looting or smoothie for resistance. 
Now I remembered how interesting mining used to be. Some very long time ago we used to have tungsteen in game. And to mine a tungsteen ore you had to dig very deep. It was quite nice mechanic, that for best reward you have to make the most effort. Some mods are still playing with it, and I hoped that ores will get rework in this game some time later. But instead of expanding this with more ores beig avariable in different depths or biomes, you simplyfied it and removed tungsteen. I still hope that it will come back, but I am afraid that we will get something like learn by looting or smoothie for resistance.
Was this in an alpha before A15? I have never seen tungsten in vanilla.
SylenThunder
Community Moderator / IT Guru
Tungsten was removed around Alpha 11 I think. Might have been a12.
bdubyah
Hunter
All they needed to do was make them like a plant class block where after some time(maybe an in game day) they would decompose into nothing. So you could clean them up if you wanted some extra resources and to prevent wanderers from potentially being able to walk right into your base after a horde, or just wait and let them go away on their own. I miss them as well.
SylenThunder
Community Moderator / IT Guru
Except that as a block, they would have occupied the full voxel space, which would make an even larger obstacle than they were as entities.
bdubyah
Hunter
I meant the terrain like gore blocks we used to have, not the bone piles.
EvilPolygons
Survivor
There's a mod for it on the Nexus. I tried it recently and it was terrible. I think you guys remember gore blocks so fondly because it's been so long since you've experienced how utterly janky they were.
Gore blocks are okay when they are piled up neatly on terrain. But the moment one spawns on a spike or any other non-voxel, they look just as bad as those diamond-shaped blocks of terrain you sometimes see after an explosion.
bdubyah
Hunter
Well, yeah, you're adding a feature from A16 and previous into the current version of the game, of course it's gonna be janky. Had they kept it in I'm sure it would've got refined like everything else has. Ideally corpses wouldn't cause so much lag when left around and you could have zombies be able to climb piles of them WWZ style, but that likely isn't feasible in this game. The idea still is solid and would be a great feature to return to the game. It made horde night much more interesting to me.
SylenThunder
Community Moderator / IT Guru
I am referring to the gore blocks you got from killing a zed. Which I believe was what that part of the discussion was framed around.
EvilPolygons
Survivor
I dunno... terrain still looks terrible when it lands on top of non-voxel objects, and it hasn't been refined after all these years. I'm not sure it even can be made any better.
I'm trying to think of any voxel-based game that's managed to solve the problem of solitary voxels looking bad. Can't think of any off the top of my head. It's just the nature of the beast -- voxels only look good when surrounded by other voxels.