Game News Dead State Kickstarter Update #25: Combat Video Released

[curry]

Combat worked alright in the Age of Decadence combat demo because every battle was carefully tuned for an enjoyable level of challenge

 

[Captain Shrek]

No comment on "bashing causes more noise hence lock-picking is good?".

 

[EG]

No comment on "bashing causes more noise hence lock-picking is good?".

Where is DraQ?

 

[InspectorRumpole]

A mechanics where if bitten, you had the option to chop off a limb in order to save the character would be sweet.
I think it would add some cool strategical dilemmas. Would you amputate a resourceful person, even if it made them "the weakest link" physically.
Would you keep a great shooter, even though he only had 1 arm left? etc.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I watched the video two more times so I must be interested. What I am warming up to is a sandbox game where I am hunting and scavenging, where resources are scarce and I have enough freedom. The good thing about them is that even flawed sandbox games are often addictive and you end up playing for a long time.

I couldn't care less about zombies or not. Looks like they realized how boring it becomes, and added encounters with humans. Down the road there may also be wild animals, then we'd have the normal enemies of an RGG, just with zombies instead of monsters.

The combat looks like what you would expect from a TB game; it could be interesting if it's balanced, challenging and integrates well into the rest of the game. What happens before the mission, what happens in the shelter, how are enemies randomized, how much freedom do we have. If everyting works together nicely this could be great. But it's quite a lot to get strategic layer, combat, exploration and story to work together.

 

[visions]

Atomic said: ↑

The combat music is terrible. omg.​

Better than the music in AoD, though.

 

[Roguey]

No comment on "bashing causes more noise hence lock-picking is good?".

It looks like it might be fine in this particular game because making noise literally causes zombies to spawn into the world and come after you and fighting those zombies causes more zombies to spawn and so on. This would either be inappropriate or trivial in other settings.

 

[Captain Shrek]

No comment on "bashing causes more noise hence lock-picking is good?".

It looks like it might be fine in this particular game because making noise literally causes zombies to spawn into the world and come after you and fighting those zombies causes more zombies to spawn and so on. This would either be inappropriate or trivial in other settings.

It has nothing to do with setting but with the encounter design. Any other 'setting' can of course have situations where making noise is deleterious.

 

[Roguey]

It has nothing to do with setting but with the encounter design. Any other 'setting' can of course have situations where making noise is deleterious.

Not without a potential chain of perpetually respawning enemies it can't. If the idea is to make the battle impossible so you have to lockpick, then why even give the option of bashing?

 

[Captain Shrek]

It has nothing to do with setting but with the encounter design. Any other 'setting' can of course have situations where making noise is deleterious.

Not without a potential chain of perpetually respawning enemies it can't. If the idea is to make the battle impossible so you have to lockpick, then why even give the option of bashing?

Becuase there can be more than one situation types?

I mean come on roguey. The same game can have encounters where you are supposed to be sneaky and where you can walk in guns blazing at different points of time.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So, I'm very interested in this game now.
It has the right level of tension to it I think, plus it requires a good bit of forethought and planning even.
This is a game that could definitely make a player rely on others to survive. Which is good.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

It has nothing to do with setting but with the encounter design. Any other 'setting' can of course have situations where making noise is deleterious.

Not without a potential chain of perpetually respawning enemies it can't. If the idea is to make the battle impossible so you have to lockpick, then why even give the option of bashing?

Because you might not have the right skill or the door might be barricaded. So to get in it might take some work. You might also break your lock pick that might be of short supply.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Becuase there can be more than one situation types?

I mean come on roguey. The same game can have encounters where you are supposed to be sneaky and where you can walk in guns blazing at different points of time.

It could be a simulationist approach, where the experience is not conducted like in other RPGs.

 

[FrancoTAU]

Looks great assuming that a lot of fine tuning is forthcoming.

It never really dawned on me when I first heard about this project, but there is a concern about combat becoming repetitive because of limited nature of zombies. I'm not sure how they plan on keeping it fresh. I mean, 30 hours into the game and battles are still just slow moving melee opponents with no tactics. There's only so many human vs human fights you can have before it becomes misleading to call it a zombie game. Might have to get a little liberal with running zombies or some other mutated versions ala Resident Evil.

 

[tuluse]

There's only so many human vs human fights you can have before it becomes misleading to call it a zombie game.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-zombie-survival-rpg

although the zombies lurk as an ever present threat, the biggest obstacle to the player may just be other humans

We are so sick of most zombie games. Yes, we get it, killing zombies is fun. But that’s not what the zombie genre is about. It’s about survival, first and foremost

Zombies are the least of your problems

 

[Shannow]

That's basically the state The Walking Dead has reached now. Zombies, at least in small groups, do not incite any terror any more.
Especially with the policeman "Vic" in the video it seems like Dead State is basically a "The Walking Dead" computer game. Which is good, IMO.
Hope this does not end up being vaporware.

 

[Baron]

Surely all this gets fixed in playtesting. I imagine in later levels it will come down to quick raids, utilizing noise makers, ram raids for supplies, fighting / running out just with the goods as hordes of zombies converge. Would produce some terrors when other events happen (car doesn't start, human group ambushes you)

 

[EG]

Surely all this gets fixed in playtesting. I imagine in later levels it will come down to quick raids, utilizing noise makers, ram raids for supplies, fighting / running out just with the goods as hordes of zombies converge. Would produce some terrors when other events happen (car doesn't start, human group ambushes you)

That's what I'm hoping for, Baron.

Right now it just looks rather tedious and boring, but I've willingly played worse so that's not a damnation.

 

[MapMan]

Okay I'm going to add few my cents, even though I know some of it might been mentioned before.

1. I hope the UI is just a placeholder because it's really bad, needs to be redone. Well, actually, all of their 2d "art" needs to be redone by another artist (not the one who made T-Rex).
2. Needs more audio work. Better ambient sounds, zombie sounds.
3. Animations... Yeah... They need some work.
4. I didn't like that you could walk up to zombies so close without them engaging.
5. It needs something like a fog of war. It's really hard to tell wether something's there or not, or just out of your sight.

Other than that it's ok or I forgot. Heh.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Zombies are mostly threatening in large groups. For Dead State 2 they should use a system that can handle a large number of zombies on screen at the same time, without slowing down the game. For example if several zombies are going to move at the same time you could run their walk animations simultaneously, I think TOEE did this.

 

[Infinitron]

Zombies are mostly threatening in large groups. For Dead State 2 they should use a system that can handle a large number of zombies on screen at the same time, without slowing down the game. For example if several zombies are going to move at the same time you could run their walk animations simultaneously, I think TOEE did this.

That's the "zombie turn" they're trying to implement.

 

[Burning Bridges]

A question that I couldn't answer is, what other games have there ever been with similar gameplay? I know Project Zomboid, but it's pretty much unplayable for me.

 

[Davaris]

Fort Zombie.

 

[Infinitron]

Covered by RPS: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/18/know-your-roll-dead-states-combat-video/

They've got an interview coming up.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Fort Zombie.

Hey thanks, I downloaded it, how could I have missed this all those years. So much wasted potential, so frustratingly broken, so annoyingly addictive. It's on par with Boiling Point Road to Hell, another one that could have been the greatest game of all time, even if the software is broken in the worst way, you still want to play it. It sort of confirmed my expectations that fighting Zombies gets annoying quickly, but scavenging, survival and resource management is terribly addictive. If Dead State will turn out a well designed and balanced game, plus turn based combat, I would wet my pants.