PC An in depth discussion on zombie loot in alpha 17

An in depth discussion on zombie loot in alpha 17

  • It is a bad decision. I already know.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • It is a good decision. I already know.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • I reserve judgement until I play with it.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • This is unimportant. TFP can go either way with this and I won't care.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
My concern is that loot becomes so rare that I give up bothering to check the ground when I kill zombies, effectively removing zombie loot 100% for me.

 
I guess most changes don't bother me because, No not my screen name, althought that plays a part. I look at what I am going to get in the long run. More performance, and I still have the option to adjust it. If you step back and take a look, anyone that plays randomgen is not completely playing a vanilla build. that is Navesgane, solid, founded in its rule immutable. The minute you put in your own seed name you are customizing to an extent. So i see it as a tool for me to adjust. Example: for sleepers I just adjusted senstivity distance and it brought it back to a comfortable norm for me. took 5 minutes.

 
Not having loot is fine, or less chance of a loot is okay, but I want to be better able to avoid them if that's the case. I tend to play a stealth game, and focus on surviving horde nights with only killing those Z's that are damaging load bearing supports, or in the case of cops those that can attack from range.

Hell, I'd be happy if you limited Z's to what they might reasonable have, clothes, a bag of chips, weapons and ammo, and old cash. Tailor the loot to what the Z's should have, althrough that might be easier said then done.

But this is a survival game, not a Duke Nukem, Kill 'em all shoot em up.

 
In favor of no loot.

looting is one of the main artery's of this game. its part of its flow. you try to siphon that too much and the body withers and dies.
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Economies (which is what the in-game resource circulation is - doesn't even have to include currency or trade to be called like that) don't work like that. Zombies are an infinite source of loot, ergo any loot they can drop is essentially as devalued gameplay-wise as it can get and the player doesn't have to use other ways to get it.

In general, as I said in the other thread as well, zombies should never be something to be chased after or farmed or be seen as a source of loot. It goes against everything its zombie-apocalypse survival concept stands for, both thematically and in gameplay terms.

 
Except that the game has rested on this mechanic for ages now. Your predisposition of what a zombie apocalypse should or shouldn't be has no bearing on the way players have interacted with this particular game for 5 years.

 
Except that the game has rested on this mechanic for ages now. Your predisposition of what a zombie apocalypse should or shouldn't be has no bearing on the way players have interacted with this particular game for 5 years.
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The meaning of the term "zombie apocalypse" or "survival" is not even a matter of someone's predisposition. What exactly are you trying to say?

 
A in depth discussion...

A hero...

A English language fail...

It's plain silly to worry about this now. You won't know how this is going to work in the game until you're actually playing it, and since you can now build guns it becomes much less important that you won't be able to loot Hunting Rifles from western zombies. Don't worry about it and make yourself sad. Wait and see.

 
Except that the game has rested on this mechanic for ages now. Your predisposition of what a zombie apocalypse should or shouldn't be has no bearing on the way players have interacted with this particular game for 5 years.
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That just means...."Its about friggin time!"

 
Zombie loot could be helpful, but never really made all that much sense. If there were some like the "Infected Survivor" from L4D2, it would maybe make more, but otherwise, they're zombies. Why would they be carrying stacks of wood, empty jars, stacks of paper... and where, anyway?

I kid you not, my very first zombie kill in this game was a cheerleader, and the loot was a doorknob and two bottles of oil. I don't think I even want to know why.... :nono:

Let zombie loot be an occasional rare drop, sure. Maybe some dukes from their pockets, a knife in a sheath, things like that. Things that make sense. Maybe tweak some of the POI and garbage loot up a bit to compensate, and let zombie loot be rare and something special- and more so for the dangerous ones. Ammo always made sense for cop and soldier ones.

 
The meaning of the term "zombie apocalypse" or "survival" is not even a matter of someone's predisposition. What exactly are you trying to say?
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What? Yes it is. It completely depends on a lot of predispositions. Are you predisposed to prefer gameplay over realism, or realism over gameplay. Are you predisposed to a certain set of zombie lore that makes it so zombies "should be" a certain way based on the ideas you've collected from a cumulative amount of fictional works surrounding the subject. What if "zombies" as we all knew them were all biker dudes strapped with guns and capable of motor and cognitive skills related to firearms handling? Then yeah, we would be able to loot zombies. You claim that looting doesn't fit with "the zombie theme" as if there's one absolutely unrefuted piece of zombie fiction with rules that need to be adhered to in terms of both concept and gameplay mechanics, and I'm saying that's ridiculous. I mean you're welcome to your opinion, but just don't act like zombie fiction adheres to the standards of scientific law or something.

 
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I voted as a good decision, and these are the reasons why:

I hated playing on a server once in a group the entire base build was designed to FARM zombies for loot (minecraft style actually)... it was completely designed around it.

Having no loot at all from zombies would be preferable as it prevents the Corpse DUPING still in the game... yes I said it. Maybe just give more XP for killing them.

It reduces 7 day horde lag. It would be fine if TFP left a timer on the zombie corpses staying there like 30 seconds before disappearing with no hit box, a lot of games I play do that like Borderlands 2.

But with that said, if TFP do add a bit of helpful loot from zombies, maybe have it auto-loot into the player's inventory that made the kill for better game performance ?

 
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I find myself pretty much agreeing with the idea that zombies should be something to be avoided, not to be farmed, as a general principle.

There may be need to do some re-work of loot tables for some crafting materials that were commonly obtained from zombies, but I'm generally in favour of this change - though I'll reserve final judgement till I play it myself.

 
im going to admit, i wasn't expecting the amount of people pro for this change. to me its felt like such a vital part of the game for ages.

in the vote i said i shall reserve judgement till the release. perhaps you guys are right and it needed to go. but to say i am sceptical is.... nah actually that does the job just right. XD il be sceptical till i get my hands on it and see how it plays for myself.

 
im going to admit, i wasn't expecting the amount of people pro for this change. to me its felt like such a vital part of the game for ages.
in the vote i said i shall reserve judgement till the release. perhaps you guys are right and it needed to go. but to say i am sceptical is.... nah actually that does the job just right. XD il be sceptical till i get my hands on it and see how it plays for myself.
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Nothing wrong with having reservations about the evolution of the game through the Alpha process. I certainly haven't been in favour of every decision made during my time in the game. Ultimately all any of us can do, is try it out and see whether the benefits outweigh the costs for our own particular style of play.

 
im going to admit, i wasn't expecting the amount of people pro for this change. to me its felt like such a vital part of the game for ages.
in the vote i said i shall reserve judgement till the release. perhaps you guys are right and it needed to go. but to say i am sceptical is.... nah actually that does the job just right. XD il be sceptical till i get my hands on it and see how it plays for myself.
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Being skeptical is always a good sign of a critical mind. Being sceptical is always a bad sign of impending death. Be very careful my friend ;)

 
I am fine with it 100%, and I am sure the rest of you will be, also. I get some of you are worried that zombies will be "worthless" to kill, but that IS why you picked the game up, right -- to kill zombies while figuring out how to survive? I solely believe it will improve everything. The survival aspect of the game, as of A16, is terrible. As soon as you get past early-game there is no difficulty in survival, for the zombies literally bring everything TO you. Now, you'll have to worry about building the base to defend against hordes on either horde nights or random hordes sent at ya due to forges AND have to LEAVE and HUNT out survival gear / etc. Before, the only reason to go out scavenging was sheer boredom or maybe some things you just weren't lucky to get. Plus, I don't know about anyone else, but I was utterly sick of having to wade through corpses to loot them because if there's a chance of loot I have to see before destroying them because of performance/annoyances of the gore blocks.

I am very happy to see that change. I wouldn't mind the bodies staying around a bit longer than instantly, but its minor. And I was utterly sick of gore blocks glitching out and exploding, so knocking out a dozen birds with one stone, this change is doing. Much love!

On a side note, the game isn't entirely based on realism... but I mean... a stripper-zombie with no bra/clothes and only a thong carrying an auger/gun parts/ gun/rocket launcher/steel pickaxe? The change overall makes sense lol.

 
ya..it's funny to read all these people who talk about how much they love killing zombies. It's their fave part of the game.

But if they can't get paid to do it they won't do it.

 
What? Yes it is. It completely depends on a lot of predispositions. Are you predisposed to prefer gameplay over realism, or realism over gameplay. Are you predisposed to a certain set of zombie lore that makes it so zombies "should be" a certain way based on the ideas you've collected from a cumulative amount of fictional works surrounding the subject. What if "zombies" as we all knew them were all biker dudes strapped with guns and capable of motor and cognitive skills related to firearms handling? Then yeah, we would be able to loot zombies. You claim that looting doesn't fit with "the zombie theme" as if there's one absolutely unrefuted piece of zombie fiction with rules that need to be adhered to in terms of both concept and gameplay mechanics, and I'm saying that's ridiculous. I mean you're welcome to your opinion, but just don't act like zombie fiction adheres to the standards of scientific law or something.
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It seems you have slightly misunderstood what I said. First of all, no, the words I used can't be "interpreted in a number of ways". Human language uses terms to describe everything in our environment - that is its main functionality, its value and it makes communication possible.

When a potential buyer browses steam and reads the "survival" tag on a game, a certain piece of information is communicated to him, which more or less is that the game is focused on the player's survival. When "zombie apocalypse" is mentioned to describe a game's theme, it means that the game's antagonists will be zombies, nothing more, nothing less.

How someone can imagine the zombie apocalypse details and characteristics may differ yes - they could be alien zombies with telepathic abilities and chicken wings if that's how you choose to imagine them to be, since the zombie term seems so fluid and someone may have made a movie about them in the past - but the fact is that the antagonists will be zombies and I think it is safe to say that this is the case with this game.

So, what I said had nothing to do with "how I imagined the zombie apocalypse survival to be" or certain lore details. And it's not that looting doesn't fit with the zombie theme or anything (which is not what I said), it's that if the players regard the game's main antagonist as a farm-able resource like they did up to now and especially in the past when they awarded quite a lot of exp, that would be a serious problem to say the least in a game that is tagged as survival. I am certain that the reasons are obvious as to why this is a problem.

Furthermore, since zombies are infinite and easily "farm-able", you can count on players never actively seeking anything that is included their loot table after mid-game.

 
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