SURE WHATEVER, company man. OK, that was the last one -
for this thread - I promise.
I have over 1,000 hours across console and A17/A18 and I don't yet have any feelings of boredom with the game. This is not to deny stallionsden's or Kubikus' or any others' experience or opinions; just stating a fact to set context for the rest of what I'm going to type.
I wonder if the different reactions to changes in the game have significant correlation to how people approach the game? Is the player a min/maxer, for example, does the player enjoy mining and building more or fighting more, does the player mostly play SP or MP, and so on. Also maybe related: what does the player see as the "end" of the game, beyond which there really is no reason to play?
I think, in theory, for a game to not have replayability
for a given person, these things need to be true
for that person, more or less:
- The "end" of the game is relatively static in the mind of the player (this does not have to be a game-driven "end"; it can be a player-imagined goal)
- The path to the "end" is either linear, or it has only a few options, or one option is so compelling to the player that none of the other options are enjoyable
- There is little else to do that is compelling to the player besides get to the "end"
- The player has either mastered the highest difficulty setting, or does not find "same, but just harder" as a compelling replay choice
I dunno, maybe there's more. But I think each of us will have slightly different opinions on those four things, and to the extent we are nodding our heads in agreement with them, we probably think the game has less replayability.
For my own part only,
1) I have no idea what the "end" of this game would even be - utter invulnerability to a horde composed entirely of demolishers maybe? It's so far in the future that I can't even
2) Not having a personal concept of what the "end" is, I obviously also do not see any paths to it. Me and my co-op partner just choose a sort of short-term goal and off we go. Probably the least efficient duo to ever have played the game.
3) For my part, there are probably 20-30 POIs that I've never fully explored, and I do find opening up new POIs compelling even if it has nothing to do with advancing towards the "end" of the game. And I just got compopack dialed in for our next game so...neverending exploration. I personally find that compelling. I also like mining, actually. Penty of ore to dig up. I also like base building and there are plenty of designs to try out.
4) Definitely not. We're on warrior I think? We can handle it, but neither of us are min/maxers and I occasionally Leroy Jenkins into a POI causing a death or two. I will say that if we ran out of compelling things to do otherwise, I would not likely find "same, but harder" to be compelling in itself. If I complete a scrolling puzzler, like Braid or Chariot, I don't go back and play again at harder difficulty. Not compelling to me.
YMMV, as this thread demonstrates.
Haven't the reasons of the reduction of the replay value been discussed to death already..? I have seen all my reasons on all forums before. But I can lay out mine quite eloquently, if you need me to:
1. I reach my end game on the first day. Which is having a gun and enough ammo to go anywhere. Getting that gun is much like start quest now, you just "go there" and pick it up, no challenge involved (unless you count killing ~ 10 trash mobs as a challenge). That means, there is no early game anymore. The early game for many seems to be the bread and butter of the game, not for me. But still, when I have played so-and-so long, I get bored and crave that early game of being in danger and building my character up. Now that motivation has simply vanished, because I am never in any danger anymore.
2. There is no reason to explore anymore. I loved exploring. I played a lot as a nomad with no base, or a base that I would only visit every now and then or with multiple mini-bases with a few chests and workstations. The reason that there is no reason to explore anymore is that every town is the same, so the only differences on the map are the biomes (and these have been reduced too). Every town has everything, which largely is because "every" POI has everything. Not literally every POI, but those with treasure rooms. Every town has what, dozens of these treasure rooms? Before, you needed to find a town that has a certain shop - books, guns, tools, meds - and it wasn't guaranteed that the next town had what you were looking for (or anything at all). Now, every POI is a little shop.
Besides that, the towns are very boring in comparison, there is no variation anymore. I think that was already removed in A16? Before, you had four types of towns: The big central city with the chessboard-ish layout, the crossroads (4 buildings max), a small and a large town. And you had a lot more of these, the map was divided into cells and each cell had such a hub, that was randomized. Let's math: With a radius of 10,000 blocks, the area of the map was..
10,000² * 3.14 = 314,000,000 square blocks
right? And iirc a vanilla cell used to be a square of 1,800 x 1,800 = 3.240.000 square blocks and if we
314,000,000 : 3,240,000 we get 97 cells. 97 locations to discover. That is just gone.
3. Perks replacing LBD (learning by doing). Before, every skill-category was something to work on individually. You had to do the individual thing to level that up, so if you were using blunt weapons for a while, you might at some point start using bladed and had to begin with low damage and level that up. A goal, something to work on, a motivation. Now, you can max out a weapon skill without even using that weapon.
4. Perks replacing recipe books. Before, you needed to find certain books to unlock recipes. That meant you had to go find them, another reason to explore. And maybe you did not find that book for a long time, so you had to find alternatives or just keep searching. Now you can unlock a perk to unlock these recipes, which makes it 100% forseeable. On top of that you have level gates (not sure how that is in A18), so the game will just deny you a certain perk before you played so and so long. The new recipes you can find make that a whole lot better, as I mentioned before, I had quite some fun with A18 by not spending a single skillpoint for 100 hours.
5. Lack of zombies outside POIs. Needs not much explanation. Even when you increase the spawn rate with modding the xml, it's not what it used to be, because zombies spawn randomly. Before, buildings would spawn zombies, so you had to deal with large hordes when you wanted to enter buildings. Not to mention (I already mentioned it yesterday) the endless spawn the central cities used to have. This is a massive blow to the game's overall atmosphere, it just doesn't feel like a proper zombie apocalypse anymore.
6. Zombie AI. They are not zombies anymore, the pathing is just... annoying? Unrealistic? When you prepare for horde night, you make that one kill corridor and that's it. I understand it can be entertaining, but... Not so much for me, as I like killing zeds with guns or melee and not traps. I might, though, try the "horde night every night" approach and see how that works. Might be fun.
These are my main reasons why I have little to no motivation to start a new game, there are a couple of more details, like simplyfied recipes or the removal of the gun-parts, and of course I pretty much "had to" give up modding, as next to everything that made my mod great was removed, particularly with the new map-design and -generation.
Having said that, once again: It's fine and I can understand when people like the changes, prefer them, see great replay value. That's all very valid. I even have played ~ 150 hours of A17 and A18, but, well, I used to play all the time - and no more. We're not making this up, it's our truth, and so "a" (undeniable) truth.
