Single player with over 500 hours and still not bored of it. I've moved onto 100% sprinters to fulfill my 28 Days Later and Black Summer wet dreams. Zomboid is the ultimate zombie simulator. The atmosphere is just incredible, especially during winter as erosion takes over. Thousands of mods to add hundeds of additional hours of content.
>>722063586i know i'll be shit on for this but i cant handle isometric 2d only topdown 2d thats why i havent played this
Honestly it should just have a bunch of handmade scenarios, make a L4D campaign out of some areas or something.
>>722063665Used to be like that but I got over it eventually. Hope you do too.
>>722063665I think this game started as isometric 2D but now it's closer to 3D with a fixed camera angle. You can drive a car off a ramp and get 3D air time, zombies have ragdolls, etc.
>>722063586The devs' first love was The Sims and it totally showsIt makes Zomboid stand out with other zombie games but also makes it feel a tad schizophrenic, like it really wanted to be one game but is almost forced to be another game instead
>>722064117There's mapping tools out for it so modders totally could, I think most just make big open world loot maps because the multiplayer gameplay tends to be looter groups basing in different parts of a spread out map than levels with a goal. No reason why you couldn't make maps like that though.
>>722064694The Sims 1 more like, anyway. Zomboid is still not worth $15, it never was, at most $10 I could see as its worth in the zombie genre.
>>722063586I find it soooo boring. Kill zombies and loot so you can... kill more zombies and loot. What else can you do? Drive a car to another town to... kill zombies and loot. There's fucking nothing to do.
no, cdda is not betterespecially not bn
>>722063586I have looting fatigue
>>722064905>Noita is soooo boring. Kill monsters and make wands so you can... kill more monsters and make more wands. What else can you do? Teleport to hiisii base to... kill monsters and make wands. There's fucking nothing to do.>Minecraft is soooo boring. Kill monsters and loot so you can... kill more monsters and loot. What else can you do? Go to a different biome to... kill monsters and loot. There's fucking nothing to do.>Need for Speed is soooo boring. Drive so you can... drive more. What else can you do? Beat a stage to... drive. There's fucking nothing to do.
>>722065328yes
>>722063586There's nothing to do after the first week. No npcs after what 12 fucking years? There's no purpose to the grind, no real goals, its so shallow after you first burn out
>>722063586There is literally nothing to do other than loot empty houses full of food even on scarce settings and lose all motivation to play after vacuuming your neighborhood. Add lies, broken promises, bugs, shitty hitreg and shallow mechanics and it all falls apart.
>>722065328>noitaAutist mage simulator>mineymanAutist dwarf builder simulator>nigboidBreak 300 chairs to level your carpentry by 1 and craft a wooden door (die to a scratch some time later because lul zombie infection eat shit nigger)
>>722065401npcs will not solve that problem anon...
>>722065328Noita has experimentation with spells, Minecraft has creativity and a actual end goalZombie literally has nothing outside looting and killing zombies. The fucking devs are too busy adding retard shit like clay pots than anything that drives the game. They can't be assed to do npcs or better horde mechanics
>>722064905that's a common issue with zombie games, they end up becoming loot simulators>>722065328>Claiming that there is nothing to do in minecraft after a while, a game notorious for its "2 week phase", is ridiculous and absurd
if you can't find sandbox games with no goals fun, it might be a (You) problem
>>722065563Knowing them it'll be shit instead of anything cool like a kinda make a settlement or base or npcs that can establish thier own shit across the map or fucking bandits or something, its such a slog
>>722065564minecraft's end goal is dogshit and extremely easy to achieve, it's unsatisfying and mostly pointless, and once you get an elytra the entire game becomes trivialyet people sink hundreds to thousands of hours into their survival worlds even after beating the ender dragon
Looks like the Sims but with zombies in it
does it have NPC? can you form community, put them to work or make them your combat support?
>>722063586How good can a game be if you're going to die in the first day, or first handful of days with nearly every new character you start? There's virtually no point to all that extra fluff like crafting and forging when you won't live under normal circumstances to get to that point anyways.
>>722065561sound pretty autistic to me
>>722065607I can play rimworld or kenshi for 2 billion hours but zombie just never comes back after you hit the wall of "its pointless".The zombies are too fucking stupid and they fucking need a horde system that works, it needs zombies to form groups in the 100s to be interesting. Currently the max a group can get is 20 and they will automatically evenly distribute across the world accordingly to some fucking pop density map
>>722065680
Cataclysm is better
>>722065816i remember playing demo, like decade ago, there were hints that it will go into npc/community directionswtf happenedcan you even meet any non hostile npc or any npc at all?
>>722065648For me after hitting the completion of the main big shit it dies down, its only fun with friends>>722065876Before it became muh 700 hours to grind bullshit and the capeship sonic oc shit got put in
>>722065889It's the HL3 effect, the longer they delay it the bigger the expectations, the bigger the expectations the less they want to do it.
>limb gets infected >no actual threat to your health, just wounds healing a bit slower>get hypothermia >can't die of hypothermia, be stuck at a sliver of health>get cold>no actual threat to health, just cough and attract zombies you would've killed anyways>no actual diseases, medicine worst skill in the game>scarce loot settings still give you a shit ton of things>leveling "skills" is a giant pain in the ass and not interesting and god forbid you die with a leveled up character>awful zombie hitboxes>zombies straight up ignore body armor mechanics and bite through a ballistic vest giving you a death sentence.>no npc's>barely any events like helicopter>guns are useless (slightly less useless after grinding reload button in your safehouse for irl hours)
lollmao
>>722065328you got it, anonwhat's the confusion?
>>722065948Bright nights existAlso, mods
>>722065648>people sink hundreds to thousands of hours into their survivalYeah because they play modded and i don't think zomboid has something autistic enough like greg/ic2/create/thaum to keep them going
>>722065974>are we clearHave some manners
>>722066031How's bn getting along? Anything cool?>>722065971The more you know the more the magic you have initially dies, once you hit a threshold the game becomes piss easy and there's just nothing dynamic about the world at all
>>722065974>2014
>>722063586I like the setting but it's so grindy, I hate the grind
Devs only work twice a year for only a couple of days, prease understandu.
Can't believe they added pottery before NPCsIs there any other game that's been in EA for longer than this?
>>722065328The closest comparison to Zomboid is Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, which has mutation path for players, cybernetics, relics, evolving harder zombies with differing abilities, alien creatures, NPCs, high level "dungeons", etc. You can build a moving fortress with automatic machine guns that drives on water. Means it has a lot of things to strive for.It's why I think it is completely valid to criticise Zomboid, because it lacks all of that. You build your base. Boom. You can never die. Just farm food, zombies can't break fences or walls (or at least couldn't). There's nothing to strive for. C:DDA has mutation paths and cybernetics, so you want to explore to improve your character. Zomboid has nothing.
>>722065607But they all have goalsWhat's the point to keep playing Zomboid once I have a barret, ammo to clear the entire map, a superfortified base with energy and water, and I have killed everything 1km around me?Nothing, you won
>>722065607A sandbox game doesn't mean it does not have goals. Zomboid has nothing to strive for. Mount & Blade, Starsector, Kenshi, etc. These all have things to strive for.
>>722065948Have they changed Cataclysm much recently? I played it a few years back and the grinding wasn't that bad. I build a APC with everything I could need and just traveled around the map, doing labs and stuff. Granted, getting the ability to build that APC needed some grinding, but it was pretty fast.
these devs are quick to wank off realism but then never explain why 80 zombies are just in a bathroom with no windows
>>722066720The mainline fork got co opted by fags who fucked everything up and started added retarded multiverse marvel shit plot and locking the implant cbms behind them instead of the labs like it used to be. Brightnights mostly is what you'd remember if you played back in day plus working helicopter code
>>7220664937 days to die, I think
>>722066865Damn, that's dumb. Getting CBMs and mutation stuff from labs was a fun gameplay loop. They even occasionally had a autodoc, or whatever it was.
>>722065590>there is nothing to do in minecraft after a whilesucks to be an NPC without any internal monologue
>>722066558Haven't played CDDA, but I'd assume the appeal of Project Zomboid is significantly different. From my experience, PZ has a big realism and survival focus, and you can't really snowball and invalidate the game with OP drops. You're always at risk of a lone zombie ganking you and ending your run. The realism tilt is appealing, and I think that with some XP balance, QoL and UI mods, Zomboid can be a pretty comfy game, whether solo or with friends.
Main problem of sanbox pos like picrel is their fucked up progression curve. You go from 0 to 100 in less than an hour and become invincible to most threats in the game by simply obtaining a sledge and destroying your staircase. No food problems, no health problems, no hostile npc are able to get to you, no event system to force you out of your comfort zone.Same with Minecraft, you go from being broke to enchanted diamond gear in less than an hour, other progression stages don't matter because how easy it is to jump over them. Then you become god swimming in lava 0 damage and ignoring creeper explosions because lol enchants lmao.
>>722067101I love starting new saves in games like this because when I have no loot in my inventory and no base at all I love exploring the map for cool locations and planning out architectural projects, defenses and how challenging the biome is to source food in (is there fishing water, can crops grow in the ground etc.) but after I make the place and have more than a single chest that can be transported by a single boat / car trunk trip the annoyance of moving it grows while the dragon disease symptoms of leaving any of the loot behind to go explore the next cool thing would sour the new place. Always gotta start a new save because of that.
>>722066939I always loved doing the trapped in lab basement start, it was hard ore as hell. Brightnights still has the good shit and just steals anything reasonable from mainline while keeping things like they used to be
>>722065328people use this argument on games they play not because of their theme but because they are popular. Zomboid is a recognizable game, people who dont really care about the zombie simulation part buy it because a goytuber told them it's good but they themselves dont really like it after playing it for a while. They acknowledge that the systems this game has are good and well, the goytuber told them it's good, so why dont they like it? Because... because it's le repeatable. They dont care about immersion, they want to click stuff and see awesome stuff happening on their screens.But I'm sort of guilty of that too. I like build autism and tried to play both poe1 and poe2 but man, the character building thing is literally the only thing this game offers. Playing it really feels like just entering the map and slaying monsters until you find the exit/boss while looting gear thats potentially better. The story is something in the background. I really dont see the appeal but when I think about the stuff I've described earlier I get that it's just not for me. I prefer Borderlands, the skill tree and gear building is less advanced but I like the grounded universe where fighting the enemies actually makes sense, also the fact that there are farmable bosses with dedicated loot
>>722066558>which has mutation path for players, cybernetics, relics, evolving harder zombies with differing abilities, alien creatures, NPCs, high level "dungeons"Now explain why Romero style zombie apoc simulator should have all this schizo tier slopI wouldn't mind car modifications tho
>>722067198As someone who has played both: The improvements PZ has over CDDA is it's real time, the combat is better than two sprites rubbing together and doesn't look like you're staring into the matrix. That's sorta it. CDDA can have some roaming super zombie fuck you up just the same, is painfully realistic at times and is as balanced as you want it. What makes CDDA better is that while you can "win" in the exact same manner as PZ by sitting in a ranch and farming yourself a literal lifetime supply of food; that's hella boring. Instead why not turn yourself into the terminator driving an RV/death fortress straight into a massive government lab where you die for the noble goal of potentially owning a fucking railgun. Comparatively the endgame goal of PZ is to own a farm and a m16 with enough 556 to deal with respawns.It is annoying, PZ, CDDA, 7dtd all have a part of the formula of the greatest game ever. CDDA has the random map, vehicle creation, endless weapons, zombie variants, NPCs. PZ has the appealing graphics and setting, 7dtd has first person guns and shit.
>>722067761Romeros movies were mostly about the human interactions during the events, pz has no one, its a lonely game
>>722063586im waiting for build 42 multiplayer
>>722063586nortubel is better
>>722067874In multiplayer Zomboid you can definitely get exactly the kind of interaction the mall survivors get from the bikers if someone finds your base. There's no stakes for players controlling characters though, and having deep connections with NPCs would require a long narrative-driven script because you're just not gonna have that with random-gen survivor #52 and his canned lines. Perhaps if they leaned more into how stuff like the helicopter is an absolute force of nature and into player behavior inciting either more military helicopters (that come to investigate the gunfire when there's PVP) and some sort of positive co-op effort like the MGSV nuke disarmament thing. Even in that game where you can barely meet another player outside a FOB invasion those small incentives drive player behavior. It wouldn't need much to snowball, I don't think.
>>722063586I keep seeing screenshots, clips and videos and yet it never appeals to me nor do any of the mechanics I hear discussed.
>>722067761The game should have something to strive for, or something that changed. Doesn't have to be "schizo"-slop, like you say it. It's the dev's responsibility to create hooks, and Zomboid lacks that. I mentioned C:DDA's hooks, because it is the closest comparison to Zomboid.
>>722065807>>722066626Genuinely asking, what's the goal of Kenshi
>10+ years of early access>still can't code npcs
>>722065876I'd play CDDA if it played and looked like Zomboid.
>>722068907There's several factions. Their leaders can be kidnapped for financial gain, they can be assassinated and the world may be a little different for it (in most cases things just get worse). You might run out of shit to do eventually after setting out on a journey like "kill all named bosses in the game" but that's not the only possible kind of journey, there's more emergent gameplay too, like even if you just start building a base with no goal and then get visited by the taxman, you can end up in a faction war with them if you refuse to pay, and now you have a casus belli that probably makes you the player interested in taking that faction out and aligning with their enemies.
Feels like they were fucking around for 3 years, map is better, but they made a frame for their new systems, barely tested and started actually working when they went public with 42. Looking at added features and fixes from the start of the year makes me think they came up with them in 2025, not in 3 years of 42 development.
>>722067805do you have any advice for someone wanting to get into CDDA?
>>722063586>It's the greatest game i've ever played>PZ
>>722068717Your never going to have a satisfying online zombie survival game because the stakes are illusionary and players know this. It's always going to descend into a PVP/Griefing game where the majority of players are just there to be assholes and not play into the zombie survival aspect. I realized this after 20 hours of Dayz.Devs of these kind of games need to focus on single player experience instead.
>>722065328that's true of Noita and NfSnever played minecraft so won't comment on that
>>722065607Life is a more fun sandbox, that's the thing
>>722065876The game where you can't even customize your starting world beyond three shitty sliders? That game?
>>722069805If the players themselves are "smaller than the world" like in a MMO where there's hub villages where you can never kill the town guards to extinction and there's a NPC military presence with helicopters that does "cleanup" and is attracted to gunfire in a more strategic way than just the zombies huddling toward it, that could be it. Maybe that exact example would be difficult to fit into this particular game's lore because of the airborne stuff, but just as an example.It might sound rancid at first to have hubs or god forbid, safezones in a game like this, but that kind of thing attracts the wholesome chungus players and girl gamers that like to farm and decorate near the safe hubs, which means you'll inevitably run into them or their friends in the loot zones. And that's when you get the really juicy interactions. It's always much more fun to rob someone on a RP server than a PVP server for this reason.
zomboid players be like "yes this is a zombie survival game" while dressing their characters like this
>>722069960nah life is a competitive pvp ranked match that takes 100 years where everyone starts with different levels of pay to win and you are expected to climb to 2800ELO while being forever stuck at 1200
>>722063586I used to love it but after last major update Im starting to get tired of the "realism only when it handicaps the player" schtick. I guess Im not masochist enough.
>>722065563They could easily prolong the fun though Even basic settlement management and bandit groups could do it
>>722070207I wouldn't bet on that character's survival, that outfit has 0% bite protection except on the feet.
>>722070202Now your just making a baby safe MMO with PVP servers.Like I said, your never going to make a satisfying "zombie survival game" online. Any and all incentives and deterrents you can add will mean nothing to pvp minded players who will be drawn to a game like this because of the amount of grief they can produce by killing other players. Zombie survival games need to be single player focused with NPCs.
