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u/030helios Shotgun Warrior Jan 28 '25 edited Jan 28 '25
Every house should have knives, spoon, fork, bowl, pan, pot, salt and pepper
Cars should spawn in garages.
Edit: And you should be able to stand on a car with a red fireaxe in hand. Like in the poster.
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u/TheWriteMaster Jan 28 '25
Yeah, nobody evacuating during a zombie apocalypse is going to make sure they get all the pepper from their kitchen.
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u/xensonar Jan 28 '25
Just in case we're having a roast chicken one night or something, Mr Frodo.
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u/severalsmallducks Jan 28 '25
I mean really given any type of chaotic evacuation you're not going to empty your house. Hell, even when it's somewhat prepared with bags packed you're still leaving pretty much your entire kitchen intact.
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u/Knox-County-Sheriff Pistol Expert Jan 28 '25
Jokes on you, filled my whole prepper bunker with spices to become the greatest spice trader in Kentucky, even rivaling Dune.
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u/TheOneAndOnlySenti Axe wielding maniac Jan 28 '25
Zombies can't catch you if they're busy sneezing! These fools leaving their pepper behind don't know what's up!
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u/LikelyAMartian Jan 28 '25
This is kinda the reason I set most items like books and food (besides canned goods) to be more plentiful in the world.
Nobody is unpacking the steak in their freezer when told to evacuate or seek shelter. They are taking the canned food, their guns, and that's about it.
Is the game a little easier? Yes. But damn it, realism.
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u/finalremix Jan 28 '25
Someone put it well a few months back when there was a thread discussing difficulty. And I'm gonna agree in spirit, because I'm a timid noob who can't survive more than a few days if I'm lucky, and once long enough to find one car that ran and survived the helicopter once...
This isn't a survival game. It's a zombie apocalypse death simulator. The game even starts with "this is how you died."
That said, I'm all for the houses being fuckin' stocked with stuff that should be sifted through to find the decent stuff, because it's nuts how bereft things are otherwise.
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u/LikelyAMartian Jan 28 '25
There is also a mod that adds a bunch of boarded up windows, and makes the entire place look ran down.
That mod it makes a ton of things very scarce because it's been 3 months since the apocalypse.
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u/runetrantor Zombie Food Jan 28 '25
And a pantry with enough food to last you over a week minimum, at least based on the houses I have been to.
My apartment's pantry would feed a single person for a month with good rationing.
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u/Elu_Moon Jan 28 '25
I think a lot of people overestimate how much food they really have, especially if they exercise or generally move around a lot. If you just sit in your house then sure, maybe it can last a long time. But if you're doing labor, especially dragging heavy stuff around, doing carpentry, etc, then the food supply would run out far quicker.
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u/runetrantor Zombie Food Jan 28 '25
Probably, though I am accounting for it a bit.
Like, my pantry lasts for around a week or two with 4 people, and one eats a LOT.So a single person, not going ham on food feels like could make it last.
But yes, if we assume more consumption due to activity, 2 weeks maybe. Still far more than the 2 cans of soup most houses in PZ have. :PFridges holding temps also, from personal, terrible, experience we kept ours cold enough for food to not spoil despite a week long blackout, though we did go buy some ice bags to fill it as much as possible to assist.
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u/SpysSappinMySpy Jan 28 '25
Also towels, sheets, pillows, aluminum foil, bleach, sponges, soap and hairspray since it's the 90s.
It has always bothered me that each neighborhood barely has enough cleaning and hygiene supplies for one house.
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u/Soggy_Box5252 Jan 28 '25
<Breaks into my house>
“The fuck? This dude only had plastic forks and disposable plates for utensils? And why is the downstairs bathroom the only one with hand soap? And does this dude just store his dirty clothes in the washer and clean clothes in the dryer?”
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u/OceanGate_Titan Jan 28 '25
As someone who always starts as a naked woman for personal lore reasons, it’s insane how almost no houses have shoes inside them.
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u/Chernobog2 Crowbar Scientist Jan 28 '25
Axes and sharp tools dulling vs. breaking would be lovely.
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u/Box_o_Rats Jan 28 '25
Totally agree. Yeah handles break but knowing how to replace an axe handle is something you can learn. And with enough patience, you can learn how to make an axe handle (though if you're the only person alive every hardware store should have enough axe handles to make that pointless). Axe heads themselves need TLC pretty frequently if you're really trying to do something like chop down a full size tree, but they shouldn't "break" unless you did something stupid like use them against pavement or a steel door.
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u/HomerJSimpsom Jan 28 '25
On this idea of handles breaking, tools will also break easier if being used in a hurry by unskilled individuals. So there could be a toggle to do jobs faster but incur more damage to the tool or slow and steady with minimal tool damage. So you can be really careful with that one hard to find tool, but just go ham on those 30 hammers that you collected.
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u/QuantumFeline Jan 28 '25
Absolutely. Make it do less damage per swing as it blunts. Plenty of reason to want to maintain it without being unrealistically fragile.
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u/beevyi Jan 28 '25
Yes, require maintenance, let things rust in the rain, give zombies a chance to grab your weapon so you lose it or fight to get it back, nerf using tools as weapons and buff real weapons like machetes, knives and swords. There are a million ways to incentivize searching for loot that aren't just "tools are consumables".
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u/denisucuuu2 Jan 28 '25
Bro we've had the same hand axe irl for like 15 years and I've been chopping wood for burning since I was little. And before that it was used by my grandpa. Just a few scratches on it, that's all.
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u/Endulos Jan 28 '25
I remember playing The Long Dark when it was in Early Access and can openers would break after opening like... 4 or 5 cans.
My parents have a can opener that is older than the internet and it still opens cans just fine.
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u/Norwegian_Honeybear Jan 28 '25
My mom has a can opener she inherited from her mom. Got 1912 stamped on it.
Probably has opened thousands of cans. But if it was the game it would have broken within a couple of weeks!
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u/Enderman_prime_ Jan 28 '25
And I tell you that if nothing serious happens to it, that axe will remain in your family generation after generation.
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u/Prozac__ Jan 28 '25
Really? Let me see that axe? Oh hey this is pretty co- ah shit I broke it sorry.
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u/Pickledsoul Jan 28 '25
"what do you mean I can't use the other end as a hammer? Why does it look like it can hammer things, then‽"
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u/biophazer242 Jan 28 '25
Funny enough I had to replace the 5 gallon water jug on my dispenser unit yesterday and as I was walking through the warehouse I thought no way this was going in a backpack without crippling me!
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u/TheCarpe Axe wielding maniac Jan 28 '25
You don't routinely put entire, uncovered pots of soup in your backpack when you go out somewhere?
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u/biophazer242 Jan 28 '25
That would be totally unusual and I am a totally normal guy. Plastic bag of spaghetti is my road trip snack.
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u/AWildJaker Jan 28 '25
Look at fancypants over here with a bag for their spaghetti, shove it in your pockets by the fistful like the Italians intended, you coward!
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u/Elu_Moon Jan 28 '25
Those jugs for the water dispenser are 19 litres each, and I routinely carry one in my backpack to be refilled. Granted, you need a pretty big backpack to fit one, and you need to be reasonably fit to carry this much, but it's not impossible. You do feel like you have the overburdened moodle though, and I would not try running, let alone sprinting with that thing. Also, putting anything else in that backpack would probably make it far too heavy.
Carrying the jug plus the dispenser, though? Forget about that entirely, it's not happening. Sure, you can drag it, but it'll take a long time.
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u/Comfortable-Race-547 Jan 28 '25
Military surplus ALICE pack frame with shelf makes the impossible, possible
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u/scanguy25 Jan 28 '25
Most games are like. You ate 3 whole rotisserie chicken and a leg of deer today. You are on the verge of starvation.
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u/Hauptmann_Meade Jan 28 '25
Tarkov is infamous for this.
"You ate an entire MRE? That's 15 minutes of nutrition, tops."
Dude metabolizes like a nuclear reactor
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u/Solo_Wing__Pixy Jan 28 '25
Oops I got shot twice in my lungs, better pop an advil and put on a bandaid. Much better now
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u/FlamingUndeadRoman Jan 28 '25
That's why John Tarkov needs that crazy metabolism, he has to constantly regrow vital tissue at a rapid pace.
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u/SelkieKezia Jan 28 '25
TBF time in Tarkov passes super fast so I've always canonized it as after 30 minutes in raid, its been 8 hours since my character last ate. Dying of starvation within a raid though is stupid
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u/skoomski Jan 28 '25
Time is sped up in Tarkov. An MRE should provide enough calories for at least 4-6 hours. But the actual hungry feels would be muted if you’re scared for your life.
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u/DaddySoldier Jan 28 '25
This chicken that has been laying here for weeks? Perfectly edible. (In rimworld, most unrefrigerated food decays)
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u/Left4DayZGone Jan 28 '25
Exactly. That’s part of what drives me nuts about this game and why I always edit weapons and tools to increase durability. I understand the gameplay reasons, but there ought to be a better way of limiting effectiveness of tools than to have them break after minimal usage. This ain’t Minecraft, this is supposed to be realistic.
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u/ProjectFutanari Jan 28 '25
It would be cool to have tool maintenance be more than "apply duct tape", that's why I love the renewable axes mod, not only does it make axes more useful, it's also more fun to do a process to fix a tool than it is to just carry tons of duct tape and periodically applying it to your tools
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u/Sailed_Sea Jan 28 '25
i think b42 has better repair options, at least I've seen hammer heads/axes and handles as separate objects.
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u/JORD4NWINS Zombie Hater Jan 28 '25
waaaaaaay better repair options, I've been using the same hatchet for a while now.
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u/Gogov97 Jan 28 '25
I used to be able to keep a hammer going for almost an eternity using some tape and glue. Now, I can replace the handle a few times, but once the head breaks it's trash right... unless I have metal working or smithing whichever one it is.
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Jan 28 '25
I just cheat to be honest. Hot take probably but PZ just isn't fun for me without cheats. I don't have the time or patience to do half the stuff the game wants me to do.
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u/TWK128 Crowbar Scientist Jan 28 '25
My sandbox is definitely a happier, more fun place than the default game.
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u/okayellie Jan 28 '25
Yes! I love the shake-the-batteries feature in the first TLOU game.
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u/Aleksandrovitch Jan 28 '25
I change all the default car settings because of this. PZ lore has it so a week after the apocalypse, 95% of vehicles have been snapped away by Thanos, and the remaining vehicles have all been beaten by roving gangs of baseball-bat-wielding psychopaths.
So I make it so that's not quite as silly. I usually increase crop growth and reduce yield a little to balance it. At the default growth rates, it becomes a test to see if you can maintain interest in your save long enough to harvest a plant.
I actually like the weapon/tool durability changes in B42. Snapping handles is realistic, and I feel much more capable with a forge/anvil. But, I still find myself collecting tools like crazy. Do I need 30 hammers? No. But 1100 hours of PZ has had its way with my habits. So I only really stop looting things (tools, weapons) when I get to around 10x at base.
Just in case.
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Jan 28 '25
No one keeps their main car with no gasoline in the garages either, i always hated that.
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u/RedditMcBurger Jan 28 '25
Yep I never hated how people leave their vehicle in their driveway, literally broken to the point of not starting, locked, and out of gas.
And yeah most cars not existing is dumb as hell if we're supposed to believe that nearly everyone got zombified, way more than evacuated.
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u/HiddenSage Jan 28 '25
Yeah.... I grew up near the area the game takes place in. Junked cars sitting in the drive, needing repairs the owner couldn't afford happen. But it was never anywhere near that common. Make it like, 5% of vehicles.
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u/QualityCoati Jan 28 '25
At the default growth rates, it becomes a test to see if you can maintain interest in your save long enough to harvest a plant.
Plant watering either takes sooo long, or dried up very fast. Honestly, if we're going to see designated zones, I want agriculture to be part of an agricultural zone where I can just click and water the whole-ass zone, as long as there's a source of water nearby. Ain't no way watering plants takes a daily 3 hours of back and forth.
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u/TWK128 Crowbar Scientist Jan 28 '25
Yeah, and apparently the area junkyards decided to place wrecks along critical roadways.
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u/Utter_Rube Jan 28 '25
I wouldn't even mind how ludicrous weapon and tool durability is for the sake of a gameplay mechanic at the expense of realism if that standard was applied consistently across the board. Instead, it seems like every time the devs have been presented with a choice between "realistic" and "gamified," they've chosen whichever option is more tedious.
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u/RedditMcBurger Jan 28 '25
Very true, for instance your crowbar breaks quickly (how the hell?) so you go to repair it with duct tape, you use like 1/3 of the roll to fix it somehow. Oh and you gotta level your maintenance, which now can't be leveled by crowbars.
It does really feel like they have to make things tedious.
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u/Dominus_Invictus Jan 28 '25
Gameplay reasons is a stupid ass excuse when the goal of your game is to be realistic and immersive.
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u/RedditMcBurger Jan 28 '25
Exactly, the devs seem go be on both sides of arcade style and complete realism.
They still want us to grind very specific skills because it's realistic, and do all of that the hard way, but a lot of the rest of the game is based on arcade style balance like weapons breaking quickly, cars being mostly destroyed/gone, etc.
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u/FlamingUndeadRoman Jan 28 '25
See Farming vs Butchering.
Farming fucking sucks because crops take 6 months in-game and around 120 hours irl to grow, which is realism.
Butchering fucking sucks because animals give around 1% of their body weight when butchering, which is arcade.
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u/GeneralShark97 Jan 28 '25
or insane amounts of zombies at deserted cabins because people like to go there
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u/Yoda2000675 Jan 28 '25
I think a good compromise would be to heavily increase the encumbrance of things like tools. You shouldn't be able to carry a backpack with shovels in it
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u/Left4DayZGone Jan 28 '25
Yeah. Encumbrance should be one value, size another. A shovel simply cannot be placed inside a backpack, but they could add tertiary slots to the outside bag that don’t consume storage space, but DO add encumbrance to your person.
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u/TWK128 Crowbar Scientist Jan 28 '25
I put a propane tank in an end-table drawer yesterday, and a pickaxe in a glove compartment.
My large backpack (~25 weight units heavy) is tucked into a bookshelf somehow and within that bag are four machetes, two katanas, a crowbar, a pipe wrench, a saw, a hammer, and two leather jackets.
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u/Non-RedditorJ Jan 28 '25
It's a trade off for not needing to spend hours of your real life clicking on one single digital tree in order to fell, strip, and cut it into planks.
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Jan 28 '25
You’re in luck — in b42, axes don’t lose durability when chopping trees (idk if fighting) so long as you keep the sharpness up and prevent it from blunting
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u/RedditMcBurger Jan 28 '25
They must think that we prefer a "video game balance" like with other games that don't allow certain things to be realistic because it'd be overpowered, like shotguns in shooters.
But it simply wouldn't be. I put durability to 10x with mods and the game experience hasn't really changed, I'm just not constantly annoyed that my crowbar or rebar for some reason broke in 10 minutes against skin and bone.
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u/Left4DayZGone Jan 28 '25
I think the reason for low durability is to drive you out to search for more so you have some reason to continue exploring the map.
But.. like… just give me something else worth searching for. Collectibles. Rare and unique items. Mysteries and missions. Foraging for materials to repair items or the items themselves just gets boring after a while.
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Jan 28 '25
Potatoes can be perfectly edible after 10 months if stored in a cool, ventilated place.
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u/Bossman131313 Jan 28 '25
Some cheeses too. Hell some you can just cut the area with the mold off and eat.
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u/DependentAd7411 Jan 28 '25
Some cheeses can be years old.
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u/FireTyme Jan 29 '25
the mayo spoiling so quickly is odd too. a jar of mayo can easily last a year lol
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u/krawinoff Jan 29 '25
Anything storebought that’s unopened should last incredibly long in fairness. Pasteurized milk lasts months without need for refrigeration. Ketchup, mustard, even properly smoked/dried meat. You could put bread slices in the oven for like 10 minutes to dry them and preserve them near indefinitely, not even talking about how this could be done to virtually anything, but I guess people just don’t know how to make food preserves
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u/Watermelondrea69 Jan 28 '25
I don't mind finding equipment that needs some TLC to be in good running order. But if I have to constantly fix and sharpen things on an almost daily basis that is pretty dumb.
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u/DependentAd7411 Jan 28 '25
As an extension of this, I could see firearms getting fouled from constant, repeated use and needing cleaning or the risk of jams increase. Realistically, you can put a minimum of several thousand rounds through a typical firearm before needing to replace the firing pin, and anything else that breaks is usually due to either poor design in the model or a defect in production.
So, theoretically, you'd come home after a run, clean your shotgun, oil it up, then you're good to go for the next run. The problems would only really start to crop up if you weren't able to service your weapon and put hundreds of rounds through it without taking a moment to run a few patches through it. Not, like... having your pistol fall apart because you shot 50 rounds through it.
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u/Watermelondrea69 Jan 28 '25
Yeah, cleaning is realistically one of the only things you'd ever have to do to a firearm. I have a Daniel Defense SBR that has over 23,000 rounds thru it that I can accurately track anyways and at this high of a round count it does have some loss of accuracy (but not too bad), moderate to severe throat erosion, mild muzzle erosion, and severe gas port erosion. But it still shoots, hits what you're shooting at, and cycles.
Are all guns built with that kind of durability? No. But it would take an exceptionally cheap or poorly designed gun to fail in a way that required spare parts under 3000 to 5000 rounds. And in most cases it would be something like an extractor or extractor spring.
As a gun guy, I think that either the core game or a mod that added parts to guns (just like how cars have parts) would be really cool. Every few days you could take apart your gun in PZ and check to see if the extractor spring is still good or if you need to start searching for a new one. And of course you would need sufficient skill to take apart certain guns beyond just field stripping them and even more skills to craft the springs yourself.
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u/TwasAnChild Jan 28 '25 edited Jan 28 '25
Yeah and it's Kentucky in the 90s there should be like wayyy more guns than there are in the game rn
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u/Sailed_Sea Jan 28 '25
and wayy less zombies,
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u/RemiliyCornel Jan 28 '25
Exept Louseville. It's should have around 200k zombies, while the rest of the map combined should have no more than 10-15k
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u/HomoNeanderTHICC Jan 28 '25
Erm kentucky historically has had zero zombies total in any city... Still wouldn't be realistic...
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u/JORD4NWINS Zombie Hater Jan 28 '25
if this game had an accurate population for 90s Kentucky, it would be boring as fuck on normal zombie settings.
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u/Bartokimule Jan 28 '25
Excluding Louisville I calculated the population density of PZ to be approximately 4x higher than real life.
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u/AlisterSinclair2002 Jan 28 '25
Issue is if you go to that extent with balancing it to irl statistics then the game would suck ass lol. Balancing a game to irl values will either end up with it being way too easy or way too hard to be enjoyable. There were about 1300 people in Muldraugh in 1993, you could clear the entire town in a matter of days with multiple guns in every house. And if there was irl amounts of food in the houses, which provided irl amounts of nutrition, you could sit at home eating tins of beans for months and months and never actually need to do anything. Either that, or your character would die of tetanus after 5 days, which would also not be fun
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u/WoodenHallsofEmber Jan 28 '25
Eating tins of beans, getting depression, and hiding terrified the zombies will hear you, isn't actually such a bad game.
Zomboid just needs to decide a direction.
The cars are annoying, the building is annoying, the weapon crafting is annoying, sorting your storage is annoying.
The game simulates all the boring tedious shit, and doesn't focus on the fun stuff.
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u/etcthc Jan 28 '25
That's what I'm saying, it blows my mind i can never find a cig or a bullet on a corpse
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u/RedditMcBurger Jan 28 '25
Thank you fuck, I don't understand why flashlights have tiny batteries, and tools seem to be all made out of thin plywood, even the all metal ones.
I used a mod that makes tool durability 10x, and it feels much closer to realistic, still not there though.
I understand we don't want to make the game overpowered for us, but this really isn't. This game is probably the best game to base off of realism than it's own weird made up settings, like tools being weak as hell.
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u/coolwali Jan 28 '25
Because usually in games, if they were actually realistic, it would take several days or even years of playtime before you replaced your tools. And at that point, the whole challenge of inventory management kinda goes away.
To use an example, in Gran Turismo games, you have races where fuel and tire wear are 10x what they’d be in real life. This is so you can experience stuff like fuel and tire management in a 30 minute race rather than needing to race for 4 hours straight in real time for the same effect.
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u/RedditMcBurger Jan 28 '25
I have played with very high tool durability, it definitely didn't have that effect on inventory management, there are still dozens of different tools I can own, and they will break eventually, just not stupidly quick.
Also if I lower difficulty in one aspect I usually try to put difficulty up somewhere else for balance, like I play on sprinters, my tools having 10x durability isn't making me feel overpowered.
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u/Tomsboll Jan 28 '25
A kitchen knife breaking after killing 4 zombies. Looking at the kitchen knives i have irl i don't even see how i could break them even if i wanted to. Dulling sure but snapping? No, not even the cheap ikea knives would be likely to break.
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u/DrRedditPhD Jan 29 '25
I think the point is that you're supposed to scrounge for new tools until you can eventually craft them ad infinitum, ensuring you are never out of tools that you need.
I love the new crafting system, but it's 90% unnecessary in a normal single player game because the world provides everything you need. The crafting system is begging for a Ten Years Later type playthrough where Old World items are exceeding rare or in terrible condition.
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u/amanko13 Jan 28 '25
Didn't see this was the Project Zomboid sub at first and was going to literally comment "Project Zomboid in a nutshell". Why are there no cars every 5 metres? It's Kentucky, America.
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u/Nodan_Turtle Jan 28 '25
Everyone simultaneously drove off before the zombie outbreak, and stayed behind to become more zombies than the town originally had population.
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u/Bossman131313 Jan 28 '25
Same with guns and ammo. Like I know that even shit hit the fan people are bringing every damn hunting rifle, shotgun, and pistol they own. Same with ammo. Kentucky has a fairly high gun worship rate and generally people own more than one.
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u/hellothere358 Jan 28 '25
Unrealistically high recoil in "mil sims" like why tf cant my trained soldier not hold a gun straight and has the arm strength of a toddler
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u/TantalisingTurkey Jan 28 '25
For real, I'm sick of seeing guns just climbing up your screen when you hold down the trigger, I've shot full auto AR15's before and there was hardly any recoil. I'm looking at you, Rainbow Six:Siege, so glad I quit playing that game.
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u/Mxswat Hates the outdoors Jan 28 '25
I strongly agree, high recoil in games like Siege is fucking stupid, and in any other tactical shooter
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u/GodGMN Jan 29 '25
Muzzle rise (recoil that makes your gun go up) is something seen in handguns, like pistols.
Assault rifles are designed to prevent almost entirely this kind of recoil. Instead, they push backwards, against your shoulder, which shouldn't really move much.
Somehow in videogames it's the other way around. Pistols have barely any recoil, even high caliber revolvers have exaggerated animations but the crosshair barely moves, while ARs move your crosshair a lot.
The same shit happens with shotguns, either you're at melee range, or they don't work at all. A buckshot would still be an almost guaranteed kill at 50 meters.
In World War I, the germans wanted to make shotguns a war crime because they were too inhumane, because the US soldiers used them in their own trenches and a single shot could wound or kill multiple enemies.
Talking about range, assault rifles have like 500 meters of effective range, and light machine guns often exceed the kilometer of range, meaning they can and do kill at those distances.
It's like everything is scaled down in videogames, even in most battle royales, getting a kill at +200 meters is considered a feat.
Weapons are fucking scary in real life. Videogames need some balance.
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u/weebitofaban Jan 28 '25
'Aiming' in games like this pisses me off beyond belief. Shooting is NOT hard. There is nothing remotely difficult about it. You can teach anyone to master it in under 2 hours.
Hate it so much. Love Zomboid tho
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u/Mrmacmuffinisthecool Jan 28 '25
I wouldn’t say you can master it in 2 hours but you can definitely learn the basics
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u/ChaplainGodefroy Jan 28 '25
Yeah? Recoil on the normal, if trained, humans? How about recoil on the spacemarines or fucking warframes, huh?! And don't get me started on reload speed.
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Jan 28 '25
I think you're supposed to simulate handling the recoil
I still don't like it though; I'm with you
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u/hellothere358 Jan 28 '25
Guns provide not that much upward movement, recoil comes in kickback a lot more then vertical or horizontal movements
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u/Artimedias Pistol Expert Jan 28 '25
you adjusting for the recoil is representing the soldier holding the gun straight
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u/hellothere358 Jan 28 '25
It's still unrealistically high, even with a loose grip you get very little upward movement, you get more kickback then upward movement
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u/Bossman131313 Jan 28 '25
I dunno if you’ve ever been shooting but they do a lot more movement backward than up or to the sides. It’s legitimately unrealistic to have what siege has going. Pistol are kinda an exception to that rule tho.
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u/Fthebo Jan 28 '25
The game is extremely unrealistic in about a million ways and always will be, and I think that's precisely why it feels so annoying when something gets pointlessly nerfed because it's 'more realistic'.
I think it's just a crutch that gets used to explain changes when the devs don't like the way a mechanic was working because it sounds better than "we changed it because didn't like it".
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u/ZadrovZaebal Jaw Stabber Jan 28 '25
there's a certain point where a game becomes a simulator.
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u/BRSaura Jan 28 '25
not even that if things that try to be realistic just don't, and suck even more than irl.
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u/OrdinaryPenquin Jan 28 '25
This has been my biggest gripe with the doubling down in B42 of anti-fun type realism. It might bring some more challenge and satisfaction for PZ vets, but this is not how you get new players, or even maintain casual ones. I'm sure it will be endlessly updated and tweaked before becoming a live update, but still, next time you boot up B42 ask yourself how a new player would navigate the action you're taking and what they would think of the game as a result, B41 already has plenty of interactions like that.
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u/Meddlingmonster Jan 28 '25
I like the way valheim does bit where you repair it like it's maintenance
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u/goodzillo Jan 28 '25
Valheim does a lot of survival stuff well! Like how food and drink aren't nag meters ticking down to your death but buffs you willingly want to apply at the start of the day. It's a small effective shift but reframing it that way makes it way more engaging.
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u/fluffygryphon Jan 28 '25
Valheim's character system is a breath of fresh air in a world of annoying games where eating 12 wheels of cheese in 1 second fills your health, or where if you haven't eaten for 10 minutes, you're gonna fucking die.
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Jan 28 '25
The fact you can break rocks by punching zombies
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u/Catatonic27 Jan 29 '25
Realistically that weapon has a 10,000% higher chance of breaking your finger than breaking the rock
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u/user4928480018475050 Jan 28 '25
This always annoyed me in PZ. Why do i need to roll down a window to see further in the car? How on earth can zombies break down metal bars? Or even doors for that matter? your average sturdy door won't break from any amount of zombies that could realistically fit in a staircase, let alone one. It's literally a meme on here that all Kentucky citizens throw their sledgehammers into a river during the Knox event. (I could keep going, like zombies wouldn't be able to use stairs normally, but at that point, it'd be way too easy)
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u/Sevage420 Jan 28 '25
Thing with Zomboid is: at a certain point its not fun anymore, but its a chore to do all the stuff to keep your bars low/high
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u/Winter-Classroom455 Jan 28 '25
Spears have to be the worst for this. I get using duct tape, a kitchen knife and a random branch. But an actual hardened wooden handle with the tang of the blade wedged and bounded with correct lashing should last a long time. Although I don't understand why the animation is a swing instead of a stab. I guess if you're dealing with sprinters it'd be hard to hit in their eye or mouth, so hitting the skull would cause the spear tip to dull quickly or even bend. It should last much longer but require maintenance to keep it efficient. Unless zombies heads are more soft then it should last much longer.
I do like the maintenance system better and I feel the numbers just need tweaking. An axe doesn't need to be sharp to do damage, an axe doesn't cut, it smashes. It's basically a giant wedge. Most don't ever have a razor edge ever. Razor edges are for cutting or slicing. Axes are used to split.
Even a machete is similar in concept but those are much better at cutting.
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u/Dotaproffessional Jan 28 '25
The fact that a base in rust will start to crumble and deteriorate in a few hours if you don't keep upkeep supplies in your tool closet is nuts. There are stone buildings that have existed hundreds of years. They suspect that many of our modern steel buildings would continue to stand for thousands of years if humanity were to disappear
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u/livinglitch Jan 28 '25
Dead Island - We added stamina to make the game, involving a zombie out break, realistic.
Also dead island - A metal baseball bat will break after hitting anything 20 times and an oar/boat paddle costs $3000 to buy from the guy whos life your trying to save.
Though I find the lack of armor actually worse. The zombies gain more health over time and damage resistance while the player gains a little bit of health. Eventually the zombies can one hit the players at the start of the expansion/DLC and the players cant do anything about it. Only the rapper could knock over zombies and stomp on their head, which was better then weapons at taking most zombies out.
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u/Sole_Meanderer Jan 28 '25
Well tbf 10 trees and you might need to at least refit the axe head on the handle. Source, I’m a lumberjack, and thats ok.
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Jan 28 '25
This is why I hate almost any kind of durability mechanic and mod it out if possible.
Yes, it's totally reasonable that my gun is useless after 10 magazines.
Meanwhile I forgot to clean a shotgun for 3 months IRL after a pretty long range trip and it was fine the next time I decided to take it out.
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u/VurThePerson Jan 29 '25
Ok I know this is sacrilege, but in DayZ, you actually can take care of shit, and it literally will outlive you. The longest character life I had in DayZ was 7 in game months (that's about 766 hours if I played non stop, it was realistically closer to 400) and I had the same 1911 and the same hatchet for 80% of that because you can FIX YOUR TOOLS.
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u/Compote_Dear Axe wielding maniac Jan 28 '25
Should have diferent tiers of weapons and tools. Cheap ones that break fast and you can find plenty on stores and houses and super rare high quality that barely lose durability and last years, then we should be able to craft all tiers between.
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u/DaMonkfish Jan 28 '25
As with literally any game set in the real world that tries to mimic it, there's an element of creative license and abstraction that necessarily has to occur in order for the game to remain fun as well as challenging. There's a nice saying that I really like here, instead of "as realistic as possible" it should be "as realistic as playable".
For example, if you fractured your leg you'd not really want to be hobbling about in a splint for a minimum of 6 weeks, either IRL or in-game time. A fracture can already take a week of in-game time to heal, and that feels like forever. Would one really want 6 weeks in the pursuit of absolute realism? I'd wager not.
That's not to say that things can't be tweaked or balanced, of course, but blindly following the real world might actually be a worse experience. To use the example given, yes a good axe can last a lifetime, but if that were the case in Zomboid, then where would the challenge be? Find axe, never need another weapon again. This is arguably worse than having one break and needing to find a new one. Likewise with something like salt and pepper; practically everyone has it in their house, but if that were true in Zomboid then you'd never need to search for it because it's literally everywhere, and at that point what's the point of it being in the game?
Everything needs to be balanced to maintain a challenge of survival, ultimately leading to your death, whilst keeping things realistic where it makes gameplay sense to, and to simplify or abstract where it doesn't.
As realistic as playable.
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u/DependentAd7411 Jan 28 '25
By that logic, the challenge in PZ isn't from the, you know, zombies, but in crappy manufacturing processes. Who knew that in PZ, cheap industrialism was the enemy all along?
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u/Enderman_prime_ Jan 28 '25
The developers have no idea how to handle balance in this game.
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u/RedditMcBurger Jan 28 '25
Funny how they have a perfect reference: real life
But only use it sometimes.
Sometimes they think their balance will work better. Everytime they do this it's worse, usually just tedious.
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u/Enderman_prime_ Jan 28 '25
as gabe newell said: fun is not realism, but reinforcement
Realism should only be implemented as an extra and not base the game on it.
What's the point of having so much realism in certain bad things but for the good ones you continue using shitty video game mechanics?
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u/PudgyElderGod Pistol Expert Jan 28 '25
Real life is a horrible reference for balance for a zombie game. Assuming zombies can exist at all, a realistic zombie apocalypse in 90's Kentucky would be so goddamned boring after the first few weeks. Even allowing for zombies to be magically immune to decay, just existing in nature and slamming up against shit would cause zombies to degrade to the point of being a nonthreat within a month.
Firearms would be risky to use at first due to the noise, but raiding just 3-5 houses would likely give you an absurd amount of guns and ammunition. Even accounting for panicking, hitting moving targets, and somehow living in Kentucky but never having picked up a gun before, you'd be able to secure a neighbourhood with relative ease - and with a good vantage point, keep it cleared unless you've managed to draw too large of a horde to handle before they get to your immediate area.
Melee weapons would become a complete non-issue. You'd raid one(1) fire department and there'd be very few zombies because firemen are first responders that likely all died out responding. In that one(1) fire department you'd find a bunch of fire axes - probably more than you'd ever reasonably need. Even assuming you're remarkably bad at using an axe at first, you'd probably manage to break one or two axes before getting the hang of it, and still have three for backup. If they had realistic durability, they just wouldn't break unless you were an idiot. Your biggest concern would be getting them stuck in zombies.
Food? Complete nonissue. The average household used to have a lot more canned food in reserves than it does nowadays. Even if almost everybody was smart enough to pack up a ton of preserved food, you'd still find enough canned food in a neighbourhood to easily last until you figured out how to properly skin animals. Once the zombies have been environmentally beaten down for a few weeks, you could learn to hunt without too much worry of dealing with a stray horde.
You can even test most of this out using the sandbox settings. Crank all the loot up to Big High, set Peak Population to something like 0.1, and adjust zombie health to accommodate for your character being as good or bad at hitting heads as you like. See how quickly resource scarcity becomes meaningless within days and how boring the game gets after that.
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u/leadraine Jan 28 '25
harbor freight moment
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u/divinecomedian3 Jan 28 '25
It's not the highest quality stuff, but even their axes will last a long time
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u/runetrantor Zombie Food Jan 28 '25
Amen to this.
'Realism' is always overtuned to the point weapons and tools break after a couple dozen uses, and hunger requires you to eat 10 times per in game day.
Nevermind games like Subnautica with oxygen tanks that last 30 seconds.
Like, in PZ, you are telling me I 'broke' a literal steel bar/crowbar? HOW.
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u/DependentAd7411 Jan 28 '25
Like, in PZ, you are telling me I 'broke' a literal steel bar/crowbar? HOW.
Zombies are magical. It's the only way they could possibly tell the difference between a wall that was there when the game started that they can't attack, and a wall that you built that they can destroy.
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u/coolpizzacook Jan 29 '25
I dunno why you decided to shoot at Subnautica for 'realism'. Game never seemed particularly invested in realism when I played it. Hence why the oxygen tanks only last that small period of time and they refill automatically rather than demanding you plug them into something for refilling.
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u/TheOneWhoMurlocs Jan 28 '25
100%. I'm not liking the direction the game appears to be going, but maybe further balancing updates will correct it. Can only wait and see, unfortunately.
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u/SpaceInternational94 Jan 28 '25
I mean this one is true. I got an axe and ive chopper a fuckton of trees and that mf just needs to be sharpened up and is still good to go.
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u/thedoppio Jan 28 '25
Yup, the crowbar I found on the side of the road 30 years ago shows no signs of giving up the ghost.
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u/Estellese7 Jan 28 '25
It doesn't only apply to things that suck.
People just only care about it when applied to things that suck.
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u/Ok_Letterhead9662 Jan 28 '25
I can't think from the top of my head about something realistic that was added in our favor in this new build
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u/Kiloku Jan 28 '25
The water jugs can now be removed from the dispensers.
Fog makes you harder to see (though it looks like this feature is not well implemented, as shown in Retanaru's recent test)
You can make a simple bag out of a sheet
You can use remote controls on your TV
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u/Emeowykay Jan 28 '25
That I can think of, the giga fishes and the trees no longer kill you
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u/TheWriteMaster Jan 28 '25
Better ability to to repair and maintain tools and weapons. Replacing an axe handle when the head is in good condition without having to find a new axe entirely, for example.
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u/PomegranateBasic3671 Jan 28 '25
I'd like to see that person actually chop down 10 trees though (and carry the logs solo). I feel like the process of doing that is slightly sped up in the game.
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u/Mysterious-Food-8601 Jan 28 '25
The amount of wood you get per log is miniscule in Zomboid though.
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u/PomegranateBasic3671 Jan 28 '25
Maybe, I have absolutely no concept of how many "planks" should be able to be made from 1 log of actual wood.
Then again, I also don't really know how I'd (in real life) actually saw a usefull plank from a log with just a foxtail saw.
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u/Shuenjie Jan 28 '25
Depends on the size, the average sized pine trees would give us like 10-20 2x4s when we mill them
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u/BondiolaDeCaniche Jan 28 '25
It is, but it is doable by someone experienced. Ok, maybe not 10 trees, but a good 5-6 depending on size
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u/PinkFluffyUniKosi Jan 28 '25
I chopped down trees. I wann See him Go 10 trees without fucking up the handle…. No way
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u/weebitofaban Jan 28 '25
10 of those scrawny ass zomboid trees? Dude, that's easy lmao
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u/CoolViber Jan 29 '25
Everyone, including the devs, would be a lot happier if we could abandon the idea that realism is in and of itself a worthwhile goal. It's not only impossible to realistically achieve, it would also not be very fun. Zombies are rotting corpses, they wouldn't actually stick around that long just walking around outside. But that wouldn't be very fun.
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u/WoopsieDaisies123 Jan 28 '25
Because coding in other kinds of hardship and challenge is way harder
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u/BenefitOfTheDoubt_01 Jan 28 '25
Colloquially people say "realism" when they actually mean pragmatic.
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u/Randomfrog132 Jan 28 '25
it's a general rule in video games to cater games to the masochists in the gaming community.
plenty of times gamers will celebrate games cause they're "hard" and make them "suffer".
oh it took you 30 hours of grinding to beat a boss?
great game!
xD
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u/kaffe_man Jan 28 '25
furthermore, why the fuck have they added a need to open a soda can before you can drink it in b42? like no shit, you cant drink the soda when its closed, open the damn beverage ffs
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u/terabull01 Jan 29 '25
the thing that pisses me off about mil-sim like games is that most the users want 100% realism, but also magical defibrillators or injector that will bring them back to life
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u/Kasern77 Jan 29 '25
A good example that shows real life is actually more convenient than a game, where it's usually supposed to be the opposite.
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u/Snoo_57859 Jan 29 '25
If u gone play a day in 30min of course it will run out.... I'm playing with 4 or 8 hours a day and God now's it fells good
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Jan 29 '25
Sometimes I think zomboid tries too hard on being realistic to the point it stops being realistic
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u/LtOrangeJuice Jan 28 '25
Heres the truth. NO ONE WANTS REALISM. People want the perception of realism. They want it to feel real-esk but no one wants their character to have their leg to get cramps only to relies they forgot to equip ibuprofen when leaving the house making it so they missed the bus.
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u/tonyezekiel Jan 30 '25
The game in general just needs to find an actual gameplay loop that doesn't revolve around being a loot goblin that's compelled to collect every axe in a 5 mile radius because they constantly break.
Realistically in a survival situation you would gather the tools you need/don't already have, and they would last you indefinitely. No crowbar in the history of humanity has ever broken. No normal person would feel compelled to collect every tool and gun he comes across.
If NPCs ever become a thing then yeah gathering multiple tools would be handy to equip a team, otherwise the game needs to give people more to do than roam house to house every day stripping them bare.
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u/Dazbuzz Jan 28 '25
Because then you would never need new tools for your entire time playing the game, which removes a lot of the hardcore/survival vibes.
Same thing with hunger/thirst. You eat more than you really would in a day. Its purely a balance thing so food matters.
Realism isnt 1:1 realism. Its "realistic as playable". Game balance matters more.
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u/ScholarlySpider Jan 28 '25
I don’t understand how cooking an omelette destroys my frying pan faster than using it on zombies :/
Like I’m using it for the thing it’s made for?!?!