so at this point I only have 3 playable peeps. and all 3 are injured. I have no idea what happened during one mission one was about to die and I quit there was like one huge mutant zombie , I reloaded and he was gone but I was allowed to redo the mission and it didn't have him but my equipment was gone..it was rather strange..feel kinda cheap but don't want to restart. Anyway I still don't have a doctor and I'm being advised to build more space for beds, the problem is I don't have any building materials. Does anyone have any advice? The only place I know that has building materials is like that warehouse just before entering the area with the church and that is aways out.
re: getting a Healer
I just got the mission where I might be able to get the Doctor.
Also I haven't been attacking infestations and such, so my fame hasn't been going up much..I think that's one way to raise fame?
Side Question: How stingy should I be about establishing side HQs? I notice I only have 5 available and they cost 1 influence per hour. There are some areas that are a way out that don't seem like a bad idea. But I figured I might want to explore more before establishing some.
Egos on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I wouldn't mind the MMO either, I'm just frown town that they decided it was smart to push MMO features (like people dying when you're console is turned off) in to a single player experience.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, the fact that in-game events can happen while you're away from the game is just... jaw-droppingly stupid.
However, I don't think those in-game events will happen spontaneously while the system is off. I think if somebody wanders off and you shut the game off without handling it, the game will simply resolve that automatically when you come back, but you won't have a bunch of other people wandering off in the interim. I mean, that's still really stupid since it means you must complete certain missions if you want to safely turn off the system, but slightly less stupid.
The use of active real-world time in this has me completely in "what the fuck?" mode in general. Seriously, what possible gameplay benefit is there to making box mines take a full real-time day to research instead of, say, two hours of in-game time? Why the fuck would you allow for game events to conclude themselves without allowing for the fact that people can't sit around babysitting a game?
I imagine that that piece of stupidity will be the first thing modders correct when the game hits PC. It neither fits the game or decent gameplay design; I can only hope that it's also a glitch that's causing missions to resolve themselves despite shutting off the system.
I wouldn't mind the MMO either, I'm just frown town that they decided it was smart to push MMO features (like people dying when you're console is turned off) in to a single player experience.
Honestly that shit wouldn't fly in an MMO either, especially one with a subscription. I'm sure as hell not paying a sub for my people to die and progress to be lost because I couldn't log in for a day or two.
The more it comes up, the more this real time nonsense becomes a pain in the ass. This isn't Facebook, we all paid $20 for this; there's no reason to have week-long cooldowns on abilities. There's no reason it should take my survivors three fucking earth days (going on probably three weeks in game time by now) to figure out how to pickle some fucking beets already.
The devs say "no one should die if you log off with your base in good shape" but that's {a} a lie (Ed died last night while missing or something, there was no open "locate missing survivor" missions when I logged) and {b} pretty dumb from a usability standpoint. When I want to shut the game off, I shouldn't have to run around doing maintenance, tending to sick people, calming down angry survivors, making sure my stockpile's topped off, and maxing out the group's morale for half an hour and THEN finally getting to power down without worrying if one of the people I've been leveling into a zombie-killing badass is going to just up and die overnight if the game is OFF.
Also: has anyone actually had any success with the radio facility? I'm low on ammo so I'm constantly calling for leads on it but all I get are bullshit messages like "Hey we found some ammo, here it is!" with no map note to tell me where to get it, or it generates trade missions where my survivors stand around the base offering to trade MY ammo for neighbor's food or medicine, which I am swimming in. Then they get pissed at me when I tell them it's a terrible idea to trade one of our precious ammo boxes for shit we don't need. If the radio missions just generate the resource you ask for and throw it in the pile, I haven't noticed. My camp has been sitting at 18 ammo seemingly forever.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
wait...wait...so I just started. When I come back on all my characters might be dead ?
Because quite a few of my characters were injured minus the inept newbie and I had some issues regarding fortification I needed to take care of :I
I have yet to lose anybody for having the system off, but I've been pretty on-the-ball regarding keeping infections down and I have a maxed-out number of outposts at the moment.
Another thing that may be affecting this is the amount of Ammunition you have in storage plus the skill levels of the people running off. People constantly run off to do stupid side missions ("Kill the armored zombie"? Really? Kill this one zombie when I killed ten of the same type driving over here?"), but they can also succeed at those mission on their own; it costs 2 Ammo, but you also get a morale boost from it.
This would all be at least a little easier if the "Surrounded by Infected!" bug were fixed. Should be fixed in a few weeks, I guess?
If they have to go through the usual certification bullshit, it could easily be a couple of months. If Microsoft cuts through the bullshit because they're the publisher anyway, yeah, we could see a patch within a week or two.
Also: has anyone actually had any success with the radio facility? I'm low on ammo so I'm constantly calling for leads on it but all I get are bullshit messages like "Hey we found some ammo, here it is!" with no map note to tell me where to get it, or it generates trade missions where my survivors stand around the base offering to trade MY ammo for neighbor's food or medicine, which I am swimming in. Then they get pissed at me when I tell them it's a terrible idea to trade one of our precious ammo boxes for shit we don't need. If the radio missions just generate the resource you ask for and throw it in the pile, I haven't noticed. My camp has been sitting at 18 ammo seemingly forever.
Every time I've asked for ammo, I've gotten an indicator to search for it in the form of a green magnifying glass on the full map. If you select the glass as an objective, it will show a handful of buildings to search to find that resource, and you'll get a bit of a reward just for finding the resource. Pretty sure the game tries to find resources for you that are pretty close to base, so look near base.
As far as trading, yeah, the NPCs are seemingly programmed to only trade for shit you have absolutely zero need for. The ONLY trade offer I've gotten is one ammo for five fuel, and that was ONLY when I couldn't possibly spare ammo and had no need for fuel. I haven't seen a trader in ages now that I'm pretty solid on everything.
Ninja Snarl P on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited June 2013
I know this is a double-post, but this is actually a fair chunk of good news from the Undead Labs forums. The first game update has been submitted and is in certification right now; it should be available next week. Here's a list of the bugs fixed and changes made; I've bolded the biggest fixes/changes:
NEW: Playable characters can no longer be killed by the simulation Workshop now repairs weapons and vehicles at game dawn rather than the next real-world day.
Reduced cooldown times of commands in the Radio Menu, notably Words of Encouragement, Words of Inspiration, and Medical Advice.
NPCs no longer get stuck behind the counter or on the stairs at the gun shop in Spencer's Mill. The "Too many infestations!" event will now only occur when there are too many infestations within 500m of your Home, rather than anywhere in the world.
The "Too many infestations" to-do item is now cleared when there are fewer than three infestations within 500m of your Home, rather than anywhere in the world.
You must now be close to the ranger station for the Memento mission scene to play. Previously you would be teleported to the station if you left before the end of the mission.
Community members will properly interact with Facilities in your home. Previously they would stop after a period of time.
Feral zombie now properly dodges vehicles approaching at an angle.
NPCs will now reliably reach warehouse between Mt. Tanner and Spencer's Mill when called to gather supplies.
You can now punch out through the windshield of a vehicle if both doors are blocked.
Zombies and NPCs no longer get stuck behind the grocery store in Marshall.
NPCs now properly move to the proper location during cinematic scenes.
Zombies no longer fall through floor in the Marshall courthouse.
Zombies can no longer get under porch or floor at the Wilkerson's farmhouse.
Fixed a few rare crash bugs.
Fixed various translations bugs.
So yeah, even the devs figured pretty quick that the whole "characters can die with system off" thing is stupid. Only sticking point seems to be the bit about PLAYABLE characters, because I could easily see that as meaning that non-friends can run off and get killed since you can't play as them yet. I guess we'll see, though.
EDIT: Further clarification from their Title 1 Update thread: yes, an NPC must be one you can actually control to be safe from dying while the game is off, once the patch hits. Until they become your friend, they can die from whatever, regardless of whether or not you're playing the game.
What the fuck is up with the whole losing shit while you don't play thing?
Stopped playing at 2:45 this afternoon and stats were:
Food 128, Meds 98, Ammo 27, Materials 110, Fuel 36, Influence 2480 and morale was at about a 9/10. I boot it up at 4:30 and Food 61, Meds 55, Ammo 11, Materials 82, and the worst was Influence 206. How did I lose 2100 fucking unfluence points for not playing for an hour and a half? Food, Meds and Ammo dropped by about half.
Every time I've asked for ammo, I've gotten an indicator to search for it in the form of a green magnifying glass on the full map. If you select the glass as an objective, it will show a handful of buildings to search to find that resource, and you'll get a bit of a reward just for finding the resource. Pretty sure the game tries to find resources for you that are pretty close to base, so look near base.
I got that maybe the first two or three times I used the radio. Since then, absolutely nothing. It eats my Influence, waits ten minutes, says it found something but never actually marks it on the map. I have picked western Marshall absolutely clean in my search, and am halfway through the eastern part of town (base is the Supply Warehouse). This... has to be bugged.
What's the point of the resource icon on neighboring enclaves? It's not like you can actually contact them and trade, deals are only requested randomly and seemingly opposite what you ask for. I wish I could box up the hundreds of rounds of personal ammo and feed them into my stockpile; since enclave lockers are replenished every day (every login?) getting bullets is stupidly simple, but the actual ammo resource is crazy scarce.
Today I demolished my kitchen for a library, which was probably a mistake. None of the research items seem particularly compelling. It's kind of silly that the only use for fuel is increasing the radius of your outpost minefields (which is an AMAZING buff, it turned half the town white) and crafting molotovs, which I don't use often and if I did I could easily scavenge all I needed from the dozens and dozens that little every tavern and household liquor shelf.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
What the fuck is up with the whole losing shit while you don't play thing?
Stopped playing at 2:45 this afternoon and stats were:
Food 128, Meds 98, Ammo 27, Materials 110, Fuel 36, Influence 2480 and morale was at about a 9/10. I boot it up at 4:30 and Food 61, Meds 55, Ammo 11, Materials 82, and the worst was Influence 206. How did I lose 2100 fucking unfluence points for not playing for an hour and a half? Food, Meds and Ammo dropped by about half.
Seriously, what the fuck.
There is a maximum amount of all those resources you can store. If you log off with more than that, it will rapidly deplete to the level of the cap. Influence is capped at your Fame level; you can exceed the cap but it will bleed off.
Of course the game seems to go out of its way to NOT tell you these things. And I don't think the resource caps are actually listed ANYWHERE in the UI; IIRC the Church can hold 50 of each resource.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
What the fuck is up with the whole losing shit while you don't play thing?
Stopped playing at 2:45 this afternoon and stats were:
Food 128, Meds 98, Ammo 27, Materials 110, Fuel 36, Influence 2480 and morale was at about a 9/10. I boot it up at 4:30 and Food 61, Meds 55, Ammo 11, Materials 82, and the worst was Influence 206. How did I lose 2100 fucking unfluence points for not playing for an hour and a half? Food, Meds and Ammo dropped by about half.
Seriously, what the fuck.
There is a maximum amount of all those resources you can store. If you log off with more than that, it will rapidly deplete to the level of the cap. Influence is capped at your Fame level; you can exceed the cap but it will bleed off.
Of course the game seems to go out of its way to NOT tell you these things. And I don't think the resource caps are actually listed ANYWHERE in the UI; IIRC the Church can hold 50 of each resource.
Church holds 25 of each iirc. I don't have the game in front of me but you it should at the bottom of the home tab?
And it does mention that you can't have more influence than fame (it also ticks down pretty fast if you do). Your resources will only reset to the hard cap after a "day"
Neither of these is really beat into your head though, it's just a small notice.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
What the fuck is up with the whole losing shit while you don't play thing?
Stopped playing at 2:45 this afternoon and stats were:
Food 128, Meds 98, Ammo 27, Materials 110, Fuel 36, Influence 2480 and morale was at about a 9/10. I boot it up at 4:30 and Food 61, Meds 55, Ammo 11, Materials 82, and the worst was Influence 206. How did I lose 2100 fucking unfluence points for not playing for an hour and a half? Food, Meds and Ammo dropped by about half.
Seriously, what the fuck.
Resources have a max storage limit; anything in excess goes away very rapidly. I'm willing to bet you only had a limit of 50 storage on most of those, which is why they dropped so rapidly. I've had a warning for this, but only ONCE in a very brief blurb about exceeding storage limits. Chances are that the game only warns you once you exceed those limits the first time; if you exceed them and keep exceeding them, the game doesn't seem to warn you any more.
As for the massive drop in influence, I literally just got an in-game explanation for that after several hours of play. Apparently your max Influence is limited by your Fame; any excess Influence beyond your Fame rating dwindles as you play. I'd noticed the dropping Influence before, but thought it was a normal game thing. That loss of Influence was because your Fame isn't high enough to hold on to all that Influence, so the game makes it waste away while you aren't playing.
Honestly, one of the major fuck-ups with this game is the near-total lack of explanation for very nearly everything. Far, far too much of this game is uncertain or plain unexplained; the "how to play" section just doesn't cover nearly enough of the questions people have about things.
EDIT: And the resource cap for a location is DEFINITELY in the UI somewhere, but you have to dig around a bit to find it and it involves manually selecting each resource type in the UI. It will show a resource limit in a number below the resource type when you find it.
I don't really want an MMO version of this, but I would love the ability to host dedicated servers for like 32 people or so.
That said, I'd still buy an MMO version in a heartbeat.
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FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
I kind of want to wait until the patch and start a new game but I'm just having too much fun, even with the couple things that are messed up right now.
I actually like that things progress while you are logged off. Then again, I also liked that my main powerhouse guy was accidentally shot in the leg by another dude that was untrained in guns. I'm assuming if I hadn't been avoiding using that guy and he actually had some gun skills, the event wouldn't have happened. If I was in control 100% of the time, my characters, my base, my supplies would be perfect and I wouldn't have to deal with any situations. I understand why people don't like these things, but for me, I like it because it makes the game pretty unique.
+2
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
It makes the game frustrating. Especially when the game does such a shit job of explaining what's going on.
It also directly, and I mean directly, punishes people who can't play 24/7. I know we talk about that a lot in terms of hyperbole, but in this case it's 100% true. The only way to not have the game screw you while your console off is to play 24/7. That's not good game design.
It makes the game frustrating. Especially when the game does such a shit job of explaining what's going on.
It also directly, and I mean directly, punishes people who can't play 24/7. I know we talk about that a lot in terms of hyperbole, but in this case it's 100% true. The only way to not have the game screw you while your console off is to play 24/7. That's not good game design.
But no one plays 24/7. Even if I play 8 hours a day, these offline events are still going to happen.
+1
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I actually like that things progress while you are logged off. Then again, I also liked that my main powerhouse guy was accidentally shot in the leg by another dude that was untrained in guns. I'm assuming if I hadn't been avoiding using that guy and he actually had some gun skills, the event wouldn't have happened. If I was in control 100% of the time, my characters, my base, my supplies would be perfect and I wouldn't have to deal with any situations. I understand why people don't like these things, but for me, I like it because it makes the game pretty unique.
I don't have any issue with random events happening, it's the whole notion of those random events, or their consequences for you not dealing with them, occuring because you can't be around 24/7. Under those circumstances, if you were to not play game for long enough, you'd end up with multiple dead characters without even touching the game, which is just some bullshit game design.
At the same time, while I find it mildly annoying that people run off to do their own missions so much, I appreciate the fact that I can just ignore those missions and those characters will have to deal with the consequences. If they get hurt or whatever, well, I could've helped them out, but I chose not to and stuff happened.
Randomization is great, punishing people for not being able to babysit a game definitely isn't. There is no requirement at all for the randomization and the real-time nonsense to be linked, other than the devs making the extremely poor decision to link them.
so wondering if someone can help me out here, are some events always there while others are not? It seems like some events last longer while others expire quicker. Not sure if this is my imagination.
Like do ones involving build friendship or gain npcs expire quicker vs the more event-y ones or is it the same?
I actually like that things progress while you are logged off. Then again, I also liked that my main powerhouse guy was accidentally shot in the leg by another dude that was untrained in guns. I'm assuming if I hadn't been avoiding using that guy and he actually had some gun skills, the event wouldn't have happened. If I was in control 100% of the time, my characters, my base, my supplies would be perfect and I wouldn't have to deal with any situations. I understand why people don't like these things, but for me, I like it because it makes the game pretty unique.
I don't have any issue with random events happening, it's the whole notion of those random events, or their consequences for you not dealing with them, occuring because you can't be around 24/7. Under those circumstances, if you were to not play game for long enough, you'd end up with multiple dead characters without even touching the game, which is just some bullshit game design.
At the same time, while I find it mildly annoying that people run off to do their own missions so much, I appreciate the fact that I can just ignore those missions and those characters will have to deal with the consequences. If they get hurt or whatever, well, I could've helped them out, but I chose not to and stuff happened.
Randomization is great, punishing people for not being able to babysit a game definitely isn't. There is no requirement at all for the randomization and the real-time nonsense to be linked, other than the devs making the extremely poor decision to link them.
Even if you babysit the game, you are going to get these random events while you are offline. Even if you played for 23 hours straight and turned it off for 1 hour, it's going to catch up like you were offline for a full day.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
so wondering if someone can help me out here, are some events always there while others are not? It seems like some events last longer while others expire quicker. Not sure if this is my imagination.
Like do ones involving build friendship or gain npcs expire quicker vs the more event-y ones or is it the same?
I have no hard-and-fast rule for this, but it seems like "story" events hang around forever with occasional reminders, while friend-/ally-related events expire after certain amounts of time. Stuff like creating diversions or going off to kill a zombie type will expire, but I don't think the major events like meeting story characters ever will. I've had a mission for the Wilkinson's hanging around for probably a couple of hours now and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Even if you babysit the game, you are going to get these random events while you are offline. Even if you played for 23 hours straight and turned it off for 1 hour, it's going to catch up like you were offline for a full day.
That's not the issue, though, or at least I wasn't being more clear about what I was concerned with. The issue is the game currently gets shut off and the simulation side of things can randomly go "haha, you weren't here to help them and they died!", which is what has people aggravated and, to clarify, was the randomization I was referring to. And it's getting patched, so it will soon be a non-issue.
Aside from that, game flow continuing when the game is off is just a poor idea. If somebody runs off and gets themselves injured WHILE you play, fine, whatever, people get hurt doing stupid things; it certainly doesn't even need to be something I can intervene on like a "kill this thing" mission. But random events when the game is off? That just generates aggravation, because nobody wants to turn on their game after not playing for a week and have three injuries and an epidemic on their hands. Half the point of games is not have to deal with the contraints of reality, and in the real world, yeah, not caring about a pressing issue has consequences. But games should come to a total stop simply because they are the sort of thing you shut off to deal with real issues, not something you should feel like you should have to turn on every so many hours to make sure you don't have a house full of hurt or sick people. It becomes a chore rather than a game.
hmm if anyone has played for a few hours and doesn't mind advising... Law + Doc related. Also I sent a runner and I think there is a bug where he is just straggling up there. So seems like I have to go and get him. Anyway here is my question if anyone knows how long these missions last
At the same time, while I find it mildly annoying that people run off to do their own missions so much, I appreciate the fact that I can just ignore those missions and those characters will have to deal with the consequences. If they get hurt or whatever, well, I could've helped them out, but I chose not to and stuff happened.
Randomization is great, punishing people for not being able to babysit a game definitely isn't. There is no requirement at all for the randomization and the real-time nonsense to be linked, other than the devs making the extremely poor decision to link them.
I don't mind that my survivors run off and do things by themselves, but it all essentially turns into "shit I gotta deal with eventually." They detect an infestation nearby and set up shop in a garage and give me a mission dot. OK, good deal. I can do the mission or not, hell I can clear the infestation without even starting the mission. But they get mad at me if I leave them hanging, and sometimes they get themselves killed while waiting. I was responding to a call for help, drove across the whole city at ludicrous speed, fought through a dozen zombies at the front door, and still the NPC died before I could reach her.
So while all those missions are "optional" I still feel pressured to do them. It's not like GTA4 where you can just tell Roman to fuck off, I'm going to kill some mobsters I don't have fucking time to go bowling and the worst that happens is his special abilities aren't always around. Your NPCs will sometimes die if you leave them hanging and they're not even really NPCs - they're alts controlled by the AI.
I'd feel better about it if they actually DID THINGS while out of your control, like going off to gather supplies that the base is low on, or scout for infestations and actually mark them on the map instead of complaining about it until one of them gets around to putting a mission marker down. Near as I can tell they don't really do anything besides kill zombies that get too close to the base, wander off and ask for my help, or go missing.
I feel like I hardly have any time to go scavenging, which is what I bought the damn game for in the first place. Whenever I do I get halfway through clearing a house and then everybody is complaining about this infestation or that armored zombie (really? FFS people hit it with a stick) and then I have to drop what I'm doing and rescue these fools lest one of them get himself eviscerated while I'm not babysitting.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
It makes the game frustrating. Especially when the game does such a shit job of explaining what's going on.
It also directly, and I mean directly, punishes people who can't play 24/7. I know we talk about that a lot in terms of hyperbole, but in this case it's 100% true. The only way to not have the game screw you while your console off is to play 24/7. That's not good game design.
But no one plays 24/7. Even if I play 8 hours a day, these offline events are still going to happen.
Of course no one does...but you and everyone else are being punished for not doing so with offline events out of your control. The game is effectively punishing you for not keeping your console on and playing 24/7, by taking major events out of your control.
We'll see if the patch makes it more pallatable with the infestation fix and playable characters not being able to die.
also has anyone had a runner stuck in an area but not die or anything? it just has my dude as "on a mission" and remaining static
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
If they're on a mission, they'll be on the mission until they complete it themselves or you help them finish it. If you're pressed for labor, look for the "kill this thing" missions and complete them to free up those survivors.
When this comes out on the pc I'm going to try never quitting the game for a few weeks. Just pause and minimise it whenever I want to play something else. See how the game deals with that.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
When this comes out on the pc I'm going to try never quitting the game for a few weeks. Just pause and minimise it whenever I want to play something else. See how the game deals with that.
At 24 hours, the base randomly burns down with everyone inside.
hmm if anyone has played for a few hours and doesn't mind advising... Law + Doc related. Also I sent a runner and I think there is a bug where he is just straggling up there. So seems like I have to go and get him. Anyway here is my question if anyone knows how long these missions last
The Law
and
Help Doc Hanson
The latter of the two expires, I think.
Is the location for it a church-adjacent graveyard? If so, it definitely can expire. In one game I tried the mission and failed, in another I had already moved my safehouse and it expired.
I think I might be the only one who actually digs the fact that you get just a sliver of information on how to do things.
I'm sorry, but the amount of fucking hand-holding nowadays with videogames is fucking disgusting. Everybody has to do it right the first time, do it the best way, and with minimal problems. I love the fact I need to trial and error some shit to figure it out, I feel more rewarded when I do finally come to an answer. I feel like I'm dating myself, but its like how games used to be. I'm digging that I don't get prompts every 5 minutes telling exactly how to navigate a task.
Personal views aside, I take it like "Ok, the world just went to shit, you need to figure shit out or you'll die. There's no step by step manual for the apocalypse". I would like to think this was their original intention. Stop holding the hand. Let the player use his brain to figure it out.
Again, that's just me. I enjoy figuring things out for my own. Hell, I still have no idea how to move my HQ, and I just learned about outposts and their benefits. Haven't lost one soul yet (that was in my party, anyhow. Sorry neighbor!)
When this comes out on the pc I'm going to try never quitting the game for a few weeks. Just pause and minimise it whenever I want to play something else. See how the game deals with that.
You probably won't have any issues. If you did that right now, your cars/weapons would never get repaired.... but the patch is going to change those to the in game clock.
I'd feel better about it if they actually DID THINGS while out of your control, like going off to gather supplies that the base is low on, or scout for infestations and actually mark them on the map instead of complaining about it until one of them gets around to putting a mission marker down. Near as I can tell they don't really do anything besides kill zombies that get too close to the base, wander off and ask for my help, or go missing.
Mine are absolutely bringing stuff back and putting it in the Storage. There's weapons in there I've never seen.
Magic Pink on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I think I might be the only one who actually digs the fact that you get just a sliver of information on how to do things.
I'm sorry, but the amount of fucking hand-holding nowadays with videogames is fucking disgusting. Everybody has to do it right the first time, do it the best way, and with minimal problems. I love the fact I need to trial and error some shit to figure it out, I feel more rewarded when I do finally come to an answer. I feel like I'm dating myself, but its like how games used to be. I'm digging that I don't get prompts every 5 minutes telling exactly how to navigate a task.
Personal views aside, I take it like "Ok, the world just went to shit, you need to figure shit out or you'll die. There's no step by step manual for the apocalypse". I would like to think this was their original intention. Stop holding the hand. Let the player use his brain to figure it out.
Again, that's just me. I enjoy figuring things out for my own. Hell, I still have no idea how to move my HQ, and I just learned about outposts and their benefits. Haven't lost one soul yet (that was in my party, anyhow. Sorry neighbor!)
And I think the game still holds your hand, just on entirely dumb things. If I carry too much shit, I'll get tired easily? Gee, thanks for constantly telling me. If I go too long without sleep, I'll get fatigued? Nooooo shiiiiit. Holy crap, a zombie horde will run after me if alerted! And those are the things I get constantly told about.
I don't begrudge the lack of an in-depth tutorial system at all, but every page about this game since it was released has 2-3 questions or answers regarding completely unexplained things. Explaining basic game mechanics isn't hand-holding, it's simple common sense. I didn't even know about the HUGELY important and valuable radio operator options until somebody mentioned it here; I could easily see somebody beating this entire game without realizing how much hassle those base functions save, and the game never tells you about any of that.
Yeah, it would've been irritating if I'd been told the optimal outpost layout for each area, but explicitly stating things like whether or not placing an outpost puts all the non-resource items from that spot in your inventory is hardly hand-holding.
I'd feel better about it if they actually DID THINGS while out of your control, like going off to gather supplies that the base is low on, or scout for infestations and actually mark them on the map instead of complaining about it until one of them gets around to putting a mission marker down. Near as I can tell they don't really do anything besides kill zombies that get too close to the base, wander off and ask for my help, or go missing.
Mine are absolutely bringing stuff back and putting it in the Storage. There's weapons in there I've never seen.
That's your runners at work. Calling them in on a location gets you one random rucksack of goods from the resources at the location, plus as many items as they can stuff their pockets with.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKERS
The game does talk about and explain almost everything. The problem is, these explanations are often cut off by other voice dialogue, or the text popup goes by to fast or at a time when you have other things to focus on like zombies trying to eat you. Sometimes they give you this information long past when you need it.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
It's not "hand holding" to effectively explain basic game systems. This isn't Super Mario brothers, there are more than two buttons to press. People always talk about how games didn't used to hold your hand, completely ignoring that games actually used to be infinitely simpler to play.
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Word is they wanted / want to add it. Game is a test run for their MMO in any case.
re: getting a Healer
Also I haven't been attacking infestations and such, so my fame hasn't been going up much..I think that's one way to raise fame?
Side Question: How stingy should I be about establishing side HQs? I notice I only have 5 available and they cost 1 influence per hour. There are some areas that are a way out that don't seem like a bad idea. But I figured I might want to explore more before establishing some.
However, I don't think those in-game events will happen spontaneously while the system is off. I think if somebody wanders off and you shut the game off without handling it, the game will simply resolve that automatically when you come back, but you won't have a bunch of other people wandering off in the interim. I mean, that's still really stupid since it means you must complete certain missions if you want to safely turn off the system, but slightly less stupid.
The use of active real-world time in this has me completely in "what the fuck?" mode in general. Seriously, what possible gameplay benefit is there to making box mines take a full real-time day to research instead of, say, two hours of in-game time? Why the fuck would you allow for game events to conclude themselves without allowing for the fact that people can't sit around babysitting a game?
I imagine that that piece of stupidity will be the first thing modders correct when the game hits PC. It neither fits the game or decent gameplay design; I can only hope that it's also a glitch that's causing missions to resolve themselves despite shutting off the system.
Because quite a few of my characters were injured minus the inept newbie and I had some issues regarding fortification I needed to take care of :I
Honestly that shit wouldn't fly in an MMO either, especially one with a subscription. I'm sure as hell not paying a sub for my people to die and progress to be lost because I couldn't log in for a day or two.
The more it comes up, the more this real time nonsense becomes a pain in the ass. This isn't Facebook, we all paid $20 for this; there's no reason to have week-long cooldowns on abilities. There's no reason it should take my survivors three fucking earth days (going on probably three weeks in game time by now) to figure out how to pickle some fucking beets already.
The devs say "no one should die if you log off with your base in good shape" but that's {a} a lie (Ed died last night while missing or something, there was no open "locate missing survivor" missions when I logged) and {b} pretty dumb from a usability standpoint. When I want to shut the game off, I shouldn't have to run around doing maintenance, tending to sick people, calming down angry survivors, making sure my stockpile's topped off, and maxing out the group's morale for half an hour and THEN finally getting to power down without worrying if one of the people I've been leveling into a zombie-killing badass is going to just up and die overnight if the game is OFF.
Also: has anyone actually had any success with the radio facility? I'm low on ammo so I'm constantly calling for leads on it but all I get are bullshit messages like "Hey we found some ammo, here it is!" with no map note to tell me where to get it, or it generates trade missions where my survivors stand around the base offering to trade MY ammo for neighbor's food or medicine, which I am swimming in. Then they get pissed at me when I tell them it's a terrible idea to trade one of our precious ammo boxes for shit we don't need. If the radio missions just generate the resource you ask for and throw it in the pile, I haven't noticed. My camp has been sitting at 18 ammo seemingly forever.
I have yet to lose anybody for having the system off, but I've been pretty on-the-ball regarding keeping infections down and I have a maxed-out number of outposts at the moment.
Another thing that may be affecting this is the amount of Ammunition you have in storage plus the skill levels of the people running off. People constantly run off to do stupid side missions ("Kill the armored zombie"? Really? Kill this one zombie when I killed ten of the same type driving over here?"), but they can also succeed at those mission on their own; it costs 2 Ammo, but you also get a morale boost from it.
If they have to go through the usual certification bullshit, it could easily be a couple of months. If Microsoft cuts through the bullshit because they're the publisher anyway, yeah, we could see a patch within a week or two.
Every time I've asked for ammo, I've gotten an indicator to search for it in the form of a green magnifying glass on the full map. If you select the glass as an objective, it will show a handful of buildings to search to find that resource, and you'll get a bit of a reward just for finding the resource. Pretty sure the game tries to find resources for you that are pretty close to base, so look near base.
As far as trading, yeah, the NPCs are seemingly programmed to only trade for shit you have absolutely zero need for. The ONLY trade offer I've gotten is one ammo for five fuel, and that was ONLY when I couldn't possibly spare ammo and had no need for fuel. I haven't seen a trader in ages now that I'm pretty solid on everything.
Workshop now repairs weapons and vehicles at game dawn rather than the next real-world day.
Reduced cooldown times of commands in the Radio Menu, notably Words of Encouragement, Words of Inspiration, and Medical Advice.
NPCs no longer get stuck behind the counter or on the stairs at the gun shop in Spencer's Mill.
The "Too many infestations!" event will now only occur when there are too many infestations within 500m of your Home, rather than anywhere in the world.
The "Too many infestations" to-do item is now cleared when there are fewer than three infestations within 500m of your Home, rather than anywhere in the world.
You must now be close to the ranger station for the Memento mission scene to play. Previously you would be teleported to the station if you left before the end of the mission.
Community members will properly interact with Facilities in your home. Previously they would stop after a period of time.
Feral zombie now properly dodges vehicles approaching at an angle.
NPCs will now reliably reach warehouse between Mt. Tanner and Spencer's Mill when called to gather supplies.
You can now punch out through the windshield of a vehicle if both doors are blocked.
Zombies and NPCs no longer get stuck behind the grocery store in Marshall.
NPCs now properly move to the proper location during cinematic scenes.
Zombies no longer fall through floor in the Marshall courthouse.
Zombies can no longer get under porch or floor at the Wilkerson's farmhouse.
Fixed a few rare crash bugs.
Fixed various translations bugs.
So yeah, even the devs figured pretty quick that the whole "characters can die with system off" thing is stupid. Only sticking point seems to be the bit about PLAYABLE characters, because I could easily see that as meaning that non-friends can run off and get killed since you can't play as them yet. I guess we'll see, though.
EDIT: Further clarification from their Title 1 Update thread: yes, an NPC must be one you can actually control to be safe from dying while the game is off, once the patch hits. Until they become your friend, they can die from whatever, regardless of whether or not you're playing the game.
Stopped playing at 2:45 this afternoon and stats were:
Food 128, Meds 98, Ammo 27, Materials 110, Fuel 36, Influence 2480 and morale was at about a 9/10. I boot it up at 4:30 and Food 61, Meds 55, Ammo 11, Materials 82, and the worst was Influence 206. How did I lose 2100 fucking unfluence points for not playing for an hour and a half? Food, Meds and Ammo dropped by about half.
Seriously, what the fuck.
I got that maybe the first two or three times I used the radio. Since then, absolutely nothing. It eats my Influence, waits ten minutes, says it found something but never actually marks it on the map. I have picked western Marshall absolutely clean in my search, and am halfway through the eastern part of town (base is the Supply Warehouse). This... has to be bugged.
What's the point of the resource icon on neighboring enclaves? It's not like you can actually contact them and trade, deals are only requested randomly and seemingly opposite what you ask for. I wish I could box up the hundreds of rounds of personal ammo and feed them into my stockpile; since enclave lockers are replenished every day (every login?) getting bullets is stupidly simple, but the actual ammo resource is crazy scarce.
Today I demolished my kitchen for a library, which was probably a mistake. None of the research items seem particularly compelling. It's kind of silly that the only use for fuel is increasing the radius of your outpost minefields (which is an AMAZING buff, it turned half the town white) and crafting molotovs, which I don't use often and if I did I could easily scavenge all I needed from the dozens and dozens that little every tavern and household liquor shelf.
There is a maximum amount of all those resources you can store. If you log off with more than that, it will rapidly deplete to the level of the cap. Influence is capped at your Fame level; you can exceed the cap but it will bleed off.
Of course the game seems to go out of its way to NOT tell you these things. And I don't think the resource caps are actually listed ANYWHERE in the UI; IIRC the Church can hold 50 of each resource.
Church holds 25 of each iirc. I don't have the game in front of me but you it should at the bottom of the home tab?
And it does mention that you can't have more influence than fame (it also ticks down pretty fast if you do). Your resources will only reset to the hard cap after a "day"
Neither of these is really beat into your head though, it's just a small notice.
Resources have a max storage limit; anything in excess goes away very rapidly. I'm willing to bet you only had a limit of 50 storage on most of those, which is why they dropped so rapidly. I've had a warning for this, but only ONCE in a very brief blurb about exceeding storage limits. Chances are that the game only warns you once you exceed those limits the first time; if you exceed them and keep exceeding them, the game doesn't seem to warn you any more.
As for the massive drop in influence, I literally just got an in-game explanation for that after several hours of play. Apparently your max Influence is limited by your Fame; any excess Influence beyond your Fame rating dwindles as you play. I'd noticed the dropping Influence before, but thought it was a normal game thing. That loss of Influence was because your Fame isn't high enough to hold on to all that Influence, so the game makes it waste away while you aren't playing.
Honestly, one of the major fuck-ups with this game is the near-total lack of explanation for very nearly everything. Far, far too much of this game is uncertain or plain unexplained; the "how to play" section just doesn't cover nearly enough of the questions people have about things.
EDIT: And the resource cap for a location is DEFINITELY in the UI somewhere, but you have to dig around a bit to find it and it involves manually selecting each resource type in the UI. It will show a resource limit in a number below the resource type when you find it.
That said, I'd still buy an MMO version in a heartbeat.
It also directly, and I mean directly, punishes people who can't play 24/7. I know we talk about that a lot in terms of hyperbole, but in this case it's 100% true. The only way to not have the game screw you while your console off is to play 24/7. That's not good game design.
But no one plays 24/7. Even if I play 8 hours a day, these offline events are still going to happen.
I don't have any issue with random events happening, it's the whole notion of those random events, or their consequences for you not dealing with them, occuring because you can't be around 24/7. Under those circumstances, if you were to not play game for long enough, you'd end up with multiple dead characters without even touching the game, which is just some bullshit game design.
At the same time, while I find it mildly annoying that people run off to do their own missions so much, I appreciate the fact that I can just ignore those missions and those characters will have to deal with the consequences. If they get hurt or whatever, well, I could've helped them out, but I chose not to and stuff happened.
Randomization is great, punishing people for not being able to babysit a game definitely isn't. There is no requirement at all for the randomization and the real-time nonsense to be linked, other than the devs making the extremely poor decision to link them.
Like do ones involving build friendship or gain npcs expire quicker vs the more event-y ones or is it the same?
Even if you babysit the game, you are going to get these random events while you are offline. Even if you played for 23 hours straight and turned it off for 1 hour, it's going to catch up like you were offline for a full day.
I have no hard-and-fast rule for this, but it seems like "story" events hang around forever with occasional reminders, while friend-/ally-related events expire after certain amounts of time. Stuff like creating diversions or going off to kill a zombie type will expire, but I don't think the major events like meeting story characters ever will. I've had a mission for the Wilkinson's hanging around for probably a couple of hours now and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
That's not the issue, though, or at least I wasn't being more clear about what I was concerned with. The issue is the game currently gets shut off and the simulation side of things can randomly go "haha, you weren't here to help them and they died!", which is what has people aggravated and, to clarify, was the randomization I was referring to. And it's getting patched, so it will soon be a non-issue.
Aside from that, game flow continuing when the game is off is just a poor idea. If somebody runs off and gets themselves injured WHILE you play, fine, whatever, people get hurt doing stupid things; it certainly doesn't even need to be something I can intervene on like a "kill this thing" mission. But random events when the game is off? That just generates aggravation, because nobody wants to turn on their game after not playing for a week and have three injuries and an epidemic on their hands. Half the point of games is not have to deal with the contraints of reality, and in the real world, yeah, not caring about a pressing issue has consequences. But games should come to a total stop simply because they are the sort of thing you shut off to deal with real issues, not something you should feel like you should have to turn on every so many hours to make sure you don't have a house full of hurt or sick people. It becomes a chore rather than a game.
The Law
and
Help Doc Hanson
I don't mind that my survivors run off and do things by themselves, but it all essentially turns into "shit I gotta deal with eventually." They detect an infestation nearby and set up shop in a garage and give me a mission dot. OK, good deal. I can do the mission or not, hell I can clear the infestation without even starting the mission. But they get mad at me if I leave them hanging, and sometimes they get themselves killed while waiting. I was responding to a call for help, drove across the whole city at ludicrous speed, fought through a dozen zombies at the front door, and still the NPC died before I could reach her.
So while all those missions are "optional" I still feel pressured to do them. It's not like GTA4 where you can just tell Roman to fuck off, I'm going to kill some mobsters I don't have fucking time to go bowling and the worst that happens is his special abilities aren't always around. Your NPCs will sometimes die if you leave them hanging and they're not even really NPCs - they're alts controlled by the AI.
I'd feel better about it if they actually DID THINGS while out of your control, like going off to gather supplies that the base is low on, or scout for infestations and actually mark them on the map instead of complaining about it until one of them gets around to putting a mission marker down. Near as I can tell they don't really do anything besides kill zombies that get too close to the base, wander off and ask for my help, or go missing.
I feel like I hardly have any time to go scavenging, which is what I bought the damn game for in the first place. Whenever I do I get halfway through clearing a house and then everybody is complaining about this infestation or that armored zombie (really? FFS people hit it with a stick) and then I have to drop what I'm doing and rescue these fools lest one of them get himself eviscerated while I'm not babysitting.
Of course no one does...but you and everyone else are being punished for not doing so with offline events out of your control. The game is effectively punishing you for not keeping your console on and playing 24/7, by taking major events out of your control.
We'll see if the patch makes it more pallatable with the infestation fix and playable characters not being able to die.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
At 24 hours, the base randomly burns down with everyone inside.
The latter of the two expires, I think.
I don't believe 'The Law' expires, though.
I'm sorry, but the amount of fucking hand-holding nowadays with videogames is fucking disgusting. Everybody has to do it right the first time, do it the best way, and with minimal problems. I love the fact I need to trial and error some shit to figure it out, I feel more rewarded when I do finally come to an answer. I feel like I'm dating myself, but its like how games used to be. I'm digging that I don't get prompts every 5 minutes telling exactly how to navigate a task.
Personal views aside, I take it like "Ok, the world just went to shit, you need to figure shit out or you'll die. There's no step by step manual for the apocalypse". I would like to think this was their original intention. Stop holding the hand. Let the player use his brain to figure it out.
Again, that's just me. I enjoy figuring things out for my own. Hell, I still have no idea how to move my HQ, and I just learned about outposts and their benefits. Haven't lost one soul yet (that was in my party, anyhow. Sorry neighbor!)
You probably won't have any issues. If you did that right now, your cars/weapons would never get repaired.... but the patch is going to change those to the in game clock.
Mine are absolutely bringing stuff back and putting it in the Storage. There's weapons in there I've never seen.
And I think the game still holds your hand, just on entirely dumb things. If I carry too much shit, I'll get tired easily? Gee, thanks for constantly telling me. If I go too long without sleep, I'll get fatigued? Nooooo shiiiiit. Holy crap, a zombie horde will run after me if alerted! And those are the things I get constantly told about.
I don't begrudge the lack of an in-depth tutorial system at all, but every page about this game since it was released has 2-3 questions or answers regarding completely unexplained things. Explaining basic game mechanics isn't hand-holding, it's simple common sense. I didn't even know about the HUGELY important and valuable radio operator options until somebody mentioned it here; I could easily see somebody beating this entire game without realizing how much hassle those base functions save, and the game never tells you about any of that.
Yeah, it would've been irritating if I'd been told the optimal outpost layout for each area, but explicitly stating things like whether or not placing an outpost puts all the non-resource items from that spot in your inventory is hardly hand-holding.
That's your runners at work. Calling them in on a location gets you one random rucksack of goods from the resources at the location, plus as many items as they can stuff their pockets with.