I haven't read all the posts, but I would like to add my argument/beliefs:
I feel TFP is planning on making replayability "good enough" for the vanilla game. I don't know any of them, nor work for them. I just feel that they personally will do this. The "good enough" is the sticking point.... if you play the game out...and want more...you simply just love the game. You might just have "found your thing" to burn time alone or with friends. Some people collect stamps, some people want to play adult zombie minecraft apocylapse simulator....
I personally *do* keep coming back to this game. I only know I *want more* because:
- I played it long enough to know whats changed. They removed the human turd? I wanted so bad to collect all those turds!!!! My tuuurds!!! arrrgh.... why why why!
- I found mods/and overhauls that made me go "this is like playing a new game, but with my favorite game!". Its like finding the sequel to your favorite movie is actually good and they didn't ruin it
Anyway...
- For "vanilla", whenever it goes gold, I hope they have the mechanics worked out to allow for some sort of "end game" and a solid quest system (you can can target quests to specific POI's, can get specific items from finding a quest satchel ( vs having to go back to a trader, etc. ) you can build in little "stories" and such.
- For "vanilla", whenever it goes gold, I hope they have the "non zed enemies" worked out, so you have non infected people running around (hopefully also shooting at you, maybe also hopefully some friends).
For the two above things, it seems that are working towards these types of goals, IMHO. I personally believe the more "mechanics" and control of those via modding is what's going to keep this game alive long after you tire of fighting the same vanilla stuff (and have seen all the POI's, etc).
I feel "replayability", once you've played the hell out of vanilla, exists only in overhaul mods because the brave (insane?) people creating these massive overhauls are literally almost creating a new game. Trying to cobble together a bunch of mods to make a "poor man's overhaul" (which I actually do myself a lot) is not fun as the way mods work today its way too easy for them to be incompatible with each other, as well as the game itself.
I feel TFP does needs to spend some work pre-gold making the modding system more robust, and a built in mod launcher (see Factorio, which has been mentioned above . It's built in mod launcher is nice, and protects you from loading incompatible things IMHO)
However, having a community supporting overhaul mods only gets you do far (it's a lot of work)
so the more things that *can* be modded/controlled by mods, and the easier for users to confidently find/use/load them is likely to extend replayability as likely we would end up with more overhaul mods, or a system where you can easily add things to an overhaul mod and know its not going to screw something up (I personally have been playing Darkness falls + Sorcery, and there's some special things you have to do to make them work together... in addition to adding my own mods, which I had to remove some as my own mods were colliding with all of it)
So, to try to wrap this up: I feel if the above things are polished, then
whats left to unlock a lot more replayabilty is to find a way to "easily bundle" a map, the mods, and the POI's, you want to include so you can basically could package up your own mini game. Some of the overhauls have done it with maps they recommend you load, but all of the "setup" is still manual and semi piecemeal unless your overhaul modder/team is super dedicated. To do this "packaging" we already have some of the tools available:
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Map generation/creation. The in-game map generation and nitrogen can do this.
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POI creation: we have this built into the game, and we have these in the forums, but I feel we need a way to "hand download/pick/view" POI's so modders can choose a "POI pack" to load. Similar to the awesome POI "combo pack" but you (as someone creating their own bundle) could *easily* look at and choose/download the POI's for the world you want to create.
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AI Enemies/Friends: The "creature packs", other zed/character packs in these forums and vanilla zombies are relatively easy to add (as mods). so just getting zeds to spawn isn't too hard, but the variety is still lacking (should you want an "all industrial park" game you have only 4-5 zeds that "make sense" in it). I don't feel this is going to improve for awhile as entity creation seems difficult and isn't supported "in game" like the POI creator. But we probably have enough, and this will likely never really be "solved" without a way to maybe spawn in zeds that are wearing specific clothing (to hide their normal skins/cloths).
- Quests "things to do": I feel this is also what's going to make it all fit together. Making "quests and scenarios" and "stories" is more possible the more this is built up and will be IMHO what makes the future overhaul games really "unique" on top of all the abilities we have available today.
- Mod launcher (built into game): mentioned above. we do have community built? mod launchers available that alleviates this pain a bit, than can launch the big overhauls (mostly, but mods can still collide)
Stretch beliefs:
- More terrain/biome/weather options ( biomes were recently paired down). I mention this as vanilla can have x number of biomes, but the ability to mod in "more" would be beneficial. Meaning: if we had the ability to add as many biomes as we wanted it would help with custom maps. Not that these biomes would actually exist as resources in the game, you'd have to hand build it all. Example: Currently I believe if you wanted to add a new biome "type" you'd have to re-purpose an existing biome (like replace "snow" with your own custom biome), thus removing "snow" as an option..as map generators are looking for "snow" specifically as a named biome. I don't know how to deal with this, if it's really even an issue other than people wishing we had more biomes, anguishing over lost biomes, etc.
