Project Zomboid

[Perkel]

NPCs coming any day now:

 

[PulsatingBrain]

I haven't played since long before vehicles. Is it good yet?

 

[thesecret1]

Multiplayer dropped, that's why there's such an influx of players.

NPCs coming any day now

They plan to work on wildlife next, so NPCs are somewhere far away still.

 

[Mortmal]

Multiplayer dropped, that's why there's such an influx of players.

NPCs coming any day now

They plan to work on wildlife next, so NPCs are somewhere far away still.

Been 20 year they promised npcs, i think we are the npcs.

 

[thesecret1]

Been 20 year they promised npcs, i think we are the npcs.

I'm sure we'll have NPCs in the next 10 years at most. What was it that one gook said once? A rushed game is forever shit, but one that is delayed may one day be loved by your grandchildren, or something like that

 

[Mortmal]

Been 20 year they promised npcs, i think we are the npcs.

I'm sure we'll have NPCs in the next 10 years at most. What was it that one gook said once? A rushed game is forever shit, but one that is delayed may one day be loved by your grandchildren, or something like that

It's ok, my steam password amongst other things is in my testament, my nephew will enjoy zomboid with npcs by then.

 

[Mexi]

I think I've been playing this game longer than any of you. I got this game on Desera or whatever that odd client was that you could download it from. I followed this game and Dead State around the time. I fucking love zombies.

I think I bought it for like $5, and around that time, there was baldspot, Kate, and Muldraugh was the only city. See, I thought that would've been the future of the game. Do some cool scenarios like saving your wife that is injured or something cool like that, or people writing cool stuff. Nope, game gets so boring after a while. I mean it's a solid game. I played it like 2 years ago, but damn, does it get boring after you get squared up. It's cool building things, but that wears off after a while.

Multiplayer is pure ass btw. Most servers that you drop into are picked clean, and the maps are so damn gigantic that you hardly ever see other players.

I CAN'T BELIEVE THERE IS STILL NO NPCS!!!!

There was some for like a second, but they did nothing except get killed instantly and walk around. I can't believe they're still trying to "fix" the sprites and everything. Why aren't NPCs the main focus? People were harping for them to add them for an insanely long time now. The last time I played the game seemed complete. As I said, the only thing missing are the NPCs.

 

[mkultra]

i find it hilarious that the game is still so fucking bad, i play it for an hour or two every other year, been doing that since 2013'ish. i think the first time i played it (when it was even more basic) i had some fun because it was something kind of new to me.
Why would i play this when there's e.g State of Decay 2 (which is still not a great game, but better).

 

[cretin]

I think its a better simulator than anything else out there. But it's just not very interesting. My friend loves this game but I'm always imploring him to drop us in the middle of a city with the zombie infestation already at peak numbers. Instead he wants to do what every other fag playing this game does which is go hole up on a farm and play Not Stardew Valley. It becomes boring very quickly as the only chance of anything remotely interesting happening is if you get the sadistic AI director event like a helicopter or something that would bring a horde down on your remote location.

 

[Mortmal]

I think its a better simulator than anything else out there. But it's just not very interesting. My friend loves this game but I'm always imploring him to drop us in the middle of a city with the zombie infestation already at peak numbers. Instead he wants to do what every other fag playing this game does which is go hole up on a farm and play Not Stardew Valley. It becomes boring very quickly as the only chance of anything remotely interesting happening is if you get the sadistic AI director event like a helicopter or something that would bring a horde down on your remote location.

Yes it's either that game mode and you end up occupying a wood cabine outside and farm as the supplies will dry out inevitably, or you play the new games modes which are pretyy much death in a few days. In all cases not very interesting and not better than years ago , despite having high level of interactivity, everything that could make a good game. Lack of plot and objectives kill it for me too.

 

[Alienman]

It really need some kind of NPCs with agencies. Like you guys say, it always end up in the same way.

 

[Perkel]

Well played 2-3 hours of new patch. Definitely game got smoother. They added actual stealth, proper "layers" for clothes for better insulation against everything including bites etc.

To be fair new patch apocalypse mode does change things a bit. Zombies actually do move alone without helicopter so bunching up in a house is much harder than before. Combat is also a lot harder in that mode which was an issue since you could reliably clean whole neighbourhoods worth of zeds. Also zeds have much better hearing and sight and move generally faster.

I will be checking it out later with friend in co-op. We bounced of it pretty hard previously due all mentioned issues with boredom.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

It really need some kind of NPCs with agencies. Like you guys say, it always end up in the same way.

Since it seems like they've given up on the Kate and Baldspot story nonsense (Originally thought the idea was a few canned stories and then sandbox as an extra) my next hope would be they make it like Rogue Survivor where there are NPCs running around scavenging the same resources as you and potentially getting desperate enough to attack and kill other people for food and shit. But since they've taken NPCs out 8 years ago or some fucking thing and refuse to talk about them it looks like they're just hoping for multiplayer survival sandbox money. Surprised they haven't shifted to a battle royale mode.

Kinda wish we'd get something else like Rogue Survivor, that was a nice simple sandbox with decent NPCs mucking around in it so it was a good time. Something like CDDA's got miles more depth but it's so deep that the NPCs can't reasonably be expected to do jack shit in it, Zomboid's theoretically simple enough they could, especially if you cheat and abstract their ability to craft/fortify buildings. Haven't looked at the NPC mod for Zomboid since I'm still so pissy about the game but one of these days I probably will just because it seems like these bastards are never going to do it themselves.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This thing still exists? I bought this so long ago, I don't even think I have a key anymore because the service I picked it up on died years ago.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

This thing still exists? I bought this so long ago, I don't even think I have a key anymore because the service I picked it up on died years ago.

IIRC it started off being sold by the developers themselves since they were getting in on that Minecraft craze of self-sold indies, then it ended up on Desura since it was easier than Steam to get into at the time, then eventually they either offered Steam keys on Desura or made the Desura keys also able to activate on Steam. If you're in Desura-limbo you may be SOL but if you bought it from the developer then maybe you could get a key out of them if you sent an email listing your receipt or something.

Looking at my email it should be a "Google Order #" from Indie Stone Studios for a direct receipt. God only knows if they'd accept that since that didn't have any sort of keys since it was just a login and password to play it on their webpage. A receipt from 2011 GOD I HATE YOU ZOMBOID

 

[mediocrepoet]

This thing still exists? I bought this so long ago, I don't even think I have a key anymore because the service I picked it up on died years ago.

IIRC it started off being sold by the developers themselves since they were getting in on that Minecraft craze of self-sold indies, then it ended up on Desura since it was easier than Steam to get into at the time, then eventually they either offered Steam keys on Desura or made the Desura keys also able to activate on Steam. If you're in Desura-limbo you may be SOL but if you bought it from the developer then maybe you could get a key out of them if you sent an email listing your receipt or something.

Looking at my email it should be a "Google Order #" from Indie Stone Studios for a direct receipt. God only knows if they'd accept that since that didn't have any sort of keys since it was just a login and password to play it on their webpage. A receipt from 2011 GOD I HATE YOU ZOMBOID

Yeah, I don't even remember, it was either directly from them or like one of the early key sites like the first Gamergate. And I've changed email addresses since then, so... whatever. It's more trouble than it's worth I'm sure.

 

[Perkel]

Holy shit hell has frozen. After 11 years. They play NPCs for build 43. Unlike 41 both 42 and 43 will come much faster as they are done by separate teams and unlike 41 they are not complete rework of everything but build on top of 41.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

42 and 43 will come much faster

I'll believe it when I see it. Otherwise I'll expect to see "I ACCIDENTALLY THE COMPUTER WE HAVE TO START OVER FROM SCRATCH WE'RE REALLY UPSET RIGHT NOW BUT OH WHAT A LOVELY OUTPOURING OF SUPPORT FROM THE COMMUNITY BUYING YOUR FRIENDS COPIES OF THE GAME YOU GUYS YOU'RE THE BEST PROJECT ZOMBOID HAS THE GREATEST COMMUNITY TO SEE WHEN I FIRST GOT INTO INDIE GAMES IT WAS BECAUSE OF YOU THE FANS" in 5 months.

 

[Grotesque]

what will NPCs do?

there will be a story mode?

 

[Alienman]

NPCs adds chaos. Played co-op with my sis and we used a mod that added NPCs. Nothing too fancy but we had some really fun encounters with looters, lone psychos, the terrified couple etc. It added a lot to an otherwise dead world.

 

[Perkel]

what will NPCs do?

there will be a story mode?

Do what other people do. You can install already survivors mod and probably it will be this + more polish + ability to use it in multi. Defending from other survivors and not just zombies could be fun.

 

[SmartCheetah]

I'm playing with a group of friends on our dedicated server and we're having a real blast with this game. For some reason we keep going on, even with fully stocked base and a lot of cars on our lot. We are still dying from time to time but respawning isn't that bad (You lose all those grinded skills mostly, but we're playing on x4 XP gain anyway)

Dedicated servers for few groups of survivors with PvP should definitely have harder settings set, so people would stick for longer. We achieved a lot in like... One week time?

 

[Perkel]

Start of the game is actually the easy part. Surviving more than first few weeks is a challange:

- fresh food runs out and you have to leave base more and more
- electricity and water ends
- population of zombies increases

If you want "end game" then there is hydrocraft mod which basically adds like bilion recipes for everything from creating mines and metalurgy to shitload of different things you wouldn't believe.

 

[Mexi]

Start of the game is actually the easy part. Surviving more than first few weeks is a challange:

- fresh food runs out and you have to leave base more and more
- electricity and water ends
- population of zombies increases

If you want "end game" then there is hydrocraft mod which basically adds like bilion recipes for everything from creating mines and metalurgy to shitload of different things you wouldn't believe.

I'm assuming you're playing the default survivor build? I just launched it, and the combat is tougher. Got killed by the first group of zombies I encountered. You can't push back 5 or so zombies with the stout trait anymore. Seems like anymore than 2 zombies is a death sentence if you're unarmed. Hell, even with a frying pan, which I used to be able to fend off crazy amounts of zombies with, I couldn't do shit.

I'll wait until they implement NPCs to do a real playthrough. I really like doing Rosewood and hiding out in the church by the river.

 

[Hace El Oso]

The most important element Zomboid has going for it is simulationism and real world scale. Turning it into yet another cheap 'battle royale' would be a tragedy. The news about NPCs is a surprise, but I think NPCs will be good within the framework that's already in place.

Having played quite a bit, mostly coop, since the big new update, I'd say there's easily enough to keep it interesting at least through the first winter. But you really need to play on 'apocalypse' and at least turn up the number of zombies or else the threat isn't enough to force you to constantly adapt and overcome, sleeping with one eye open (especially with more than one person, I personally use "high"). I also turn darkness to one step darker than default because otherwise night is essentially blue-filtered evening and you never have to respect the dark, use a flashlight, etc. The lighting is very good looking as well (rare these days), which you won't see if everything is washed out. The music, ambient sounds and general soundscape are top-quality. I find the atmosphere to be second-to-none for this type of game, and a reason to play it in-and-of itself.

At one point I found myself on an isolated forest road on the way back to town and rapidly running out of daylight. Luckily, I came to an auxiliary road with a weather station at the end of it where I could spend the night. I found a radio and turned it on before I went to sleep on the floor of a maintenance room. It was 0200 but one of the talk radio people was still on the air, talking about the bleak nature of death and how they were sorry it turned out this way, for everyone. In the morning all the radio stations had stopped broadcasting except for the Emergency Broadcast System.
Some time after that a friend and I were driving through farm country after packing everything up in a pickup truck to try and get to a better location in another town. After taking one too many beatings the engine started to die as we drove. At first you could coast along and start it back up for a minute, and then it finally went dead for good. We managed to stop next to the turnoff for a farmhouse, and decided to spend the night and figure out what to do. There was a rainstorm and the sun was going down, so naturally when I went inside the first thing I did was flip the lightswitch, and... nothing happened. The power had finally shut off, and the running water with it. Just then, in the distance, a woman screamed.

None of that being set-up or part of some story campaign is what made it so remarkable and what keeps the game fun, if that kind of thing is your cup of tea and you're patient.

I would recommend two mods in particular for what they add to the existing gameplay, though I use a few more and a couple things I made myself.
The first is the "Expanded Helicopter Events" mod that turns what is by default a single flyover by a helicopter and turns it into a half-dozen different types of helicopters, airdrops, crash sites, and jet flybys. You can also set them to cease after ~90 days or continue after that point, though they become more hostile over time.
The second is "Save Our Station" which adds a weather station to each town along with a nearby location or two. Very professional quality, but the real addition is that with (a lot of) time the Emergency Broadcast System will no longer broadcast in your area due to a failure in one of the relays. These weather stations are those relays for that system, so you'll need to find out which one is failing and go repair it if you want to continue to benefit from the information it provides (which includes air activity). It gives you another thing to do later in the game when you might be looking for reasons to have to wander from any base you might have built.