Dead State - Release Today

You guys apparently are not nearly as stupid as I was in my wipeout above. :p

Funny, I found it pretty easy to run away from bad situations in State of Decay, as I recall, and kite the zombies slowly.
 
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This mostly seems like a visual novel entertwined with Fallout-lite gameplay. It's not all that bad I would say. But yes in most looting expeditions you are far too comfortable. It's much too easy to approach a zombie from behind, kill him with your best fighter with 100% his chances, run away and repeat until none are left standing. You have no reason to use any ammunition on zombies.

It's certainly not a bad game but it could have been more. If they do a sequel I hope they're not afraid to treat their players harshly.
 
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I'm getting really tired of the bugs, when entering areas I already visited I get problems where I can't select any of the party members other than my main character and I just entered one area where all characters but my main character disappeared completely.
 
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You guys apparently are not nearly as stupid as I was in my wipeout above. :p

Funny, I found it pretty easy to run away from bad situations in State of Decay, as I recall, and kite the zombies slowly.

Stupid? It is about compliance with routines.

The scavenging runs, as they are, do not press the player out of a comfort zone. Safe mapping, safe taking out of zombies etc... They are the same routines over and over again. And you have all the time you can wish to apply them. Nothing from the game is going to disturb the player.

The previous comment showed how the game could work (all the mechanics are in, they simply do not trigger) and should work.
The report is also much richer than it could be when written by a player applying routines.
 
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Indeed. I have played the game some more and see your point. With more caution than i displayed earlier, i have gone through the same situation in my wipeout and others more easily. I noticed they patched how enemies react to sound, but haven't played since then. Hope the patches continue.
 
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Also is it just me but is the character Doug suspiciously like Cleve Blakemore? I was almost expecting him to rant about his titanium bones and how he survived the L.A. riots.
 
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Well, they did change how sound works. Banging doors in isn't such a hot idea anymore. Banged once and drew a whole crowd from around the map. Cleared the zombies and finished knocking the door down to find several from inside the store waiting in a mob.

I'd still like to see them add more wandering foes, but I'm having fun with the game. Joel the cop panicked, had a run of bad luck and got mobbed by humans and zombies. Later, as I was clearing them out, there was zombie Joel, and I had to shoot him in the face. This makes me smile. :)
 
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It looks more as if they enable swarming zombie mechanics.

All in all, it appears it is better to wait for a few patches to go through: they are still working on features.

Last patch, for example, severely impairs the mobility of the party around the map, making it very hard to loot several locations per day. One way among others to deal with the issue of scavenging runs.

Beside, that last patch also broke several things etc

Some other features also do not work in the current state of things.
 
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Yeah there were definitely far too few consequences to just banging doors open, I just did and ran away only to come back a minute later with no troubles every time.
 
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You guys apparently are not nearly as stupid as I was in my wipeout above. :p

Funny, I found it pretty easy to run away from bad situations in State of Decay, as I recall, and kite the zombies slowly.

Oh, I was that stupid. I just reloaded alot in the beginning, and still do from time to time. I don't have the time nor the patience to go Ironman. Does it make it too easy? Probably, but it's still great fun.
 
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After trying various paths, it appears that waiting a few more patches might not better. There is a big risk behind that.

At the moment, the version of the product has many flaws and one merit: going smoothly through the large content of the game.

The gameplay is in an alpha stage: many features (like character's special skills, panic/horror mode) are either non implemented or non functional with no situation to support the expression of the features. The list of the latter category is long, very long: secondary attacks, no meaning at the moment, a lot of items, no meaning (I could go as far as telling that healing items have no meaning as it is so easy to make it without them), base upgrades etc

The major flaw is the task completion rate: way too high currently.
The to do list is most of the time an already done list.
The pace of the story and incidentally the gameplay would want the player to fall behind so that the player must favour certain characters in the shelter over others etc

The completion rate is too high because of the scavenging runs. Hitting several locations in the same day and clearing them out is a given.

One consequence: progression and then experiencing of the content goes smoothly, it goes fast and you can see everything at little cost.

Steps have been taken to decrease the rate: for example, the party moves slower on the strategic map, which mean less hit places per day.

Nevertheless, the speed on the strategic map is a minor issue compared to the opportunity of clearing totally a level in one swoop.
Ideally, the player should come to a location with precise objectives, get what is needed and run away before risking more. Hit, loot, run.
It does not happen in the current version.
And that is because some features are missing that would make the party reliability and yield drop.

If solutions are adequate, then it would follow a demand for a change in the loot distribution: the current version does not exhibit a strong relation between high risk, high reward location. It will be one thing to decrease the yield of a run, but the player must be given the opportunity to choose the risk level.

The current picture:
-monodimensional play based on routines, most of options mean nothing, player can visit all locations, locations can be visited at a rate of two, three per day (still put the whole game duration over months mark due the large content), no survival dimension as the player bathes in resources

Possible future picture:
-multidimension play, options mean, during a playthrough, a player will not visit all the locations, will gamble on hitting certain locations, characters will be very different one from other, loss in characters will be detrimental, player will struggle and know scarcity of resources etc

That is a possible future picture.

One other is that the developpers do not manage and that their attempts make the game extremelly tedious to go through.

It is certainly a possibility, so waiting for more patches before jumping in might not be that a better idea.
 
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Doesn't sound like it's ready to play yet. Too bad, but not surprised. If those behind this were really motivated, it would have been finished a while ago....
 
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Doesn't sound like it's ready to play yet. Too bad, but not surprised. If those behind this were really motivated, it would have been finished a while ago….

say what?
 
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Doesn't sound like it's ready to play yet. Too bad, but not surprised. If those behind this were really motivated, it would have been finished a while ago….

Oh it's perfectly playable, I've had one crash in 20 hours and no bugs. You have to take Chien's posts with a grain of salt. Actually, make it a cup. Or a gallon. :)

I'm enjoying it more and more as I get further in, although I suspect it will get tedious before the end. Still got my moneys worth though, several times over.
 
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Do you know how long this has been in development? Check it out.

4 years started in 2010....not really going strong until the kick starter which was in 2012 which ended july 2012.
 
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I've still not played it since the beta other than to turn it on an make it through the initial dialog but it does sound like its where I thought it would be. I stand by that some of the NPCs and interactions get more interesting as the game progresses.

Regarding diversity, there are about 100 locations and 50 random events and about 40 "friendly" npcs and many other not so friendly NPCs. Of the 40, many have to be found or you have to wait for a specific day before they are randomly available. Not all of the NPCs stay friendly and some who you think are trouble are not and vice versa which is probably where some of the strength of the content of the game is. The combat is functional but AI in the betas was dumb as rocks. I had heard that they were smarter at one point and broke but I never saw that.

I strongly suspect that if they had anything in 2010 it was a couple of napkins and by 2012 it was then some papers and proof of concept but not much more. I do think it probably needs another year in the oven before its really done but I'm going to guess they need the cash infusion from releasing it to keep things going.

I think they were hampered by the choice of game engine as they used Torque 3D. While there was no licensing fee and has some free features like a world editor and gui editor, it is not what I would use if I had any money at all. Developers time is more valuable than the licensing fee. You likely make your money back with Unity in about week on just productivity gains.
 
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There are tons of content. That was the point of the previous post. In the current state, players can find all the content comfortably. It might not be the case in later versions.

Doesn't sound like it's ready to play yet. Too bad, but not surprised. If those behind this were really motivated, it would have been finished a while ago….

Players can go from one end to another end.
The rest depends on the expectations of what is to be done between.

Players who expect to be pushed into crisis despite working to avoid them are going to have a hard time finding that in the current version.

So to speak, I did not go through from one end to the other multiple times: I backpedalled to earlier saves corresponding to important decisions (most of the time, upgrading the shelther) and pick up from that point to change the course of action. The earliest used save: 6 th in game day, a walkthrough goes over months.
I doubt that starting from the start would have changed things.

Here's a report of what was experienced each time:
  • Never lost one survivor other than the one I sacrificed to see what happened during one of the first plays.
  • Never got one survivor down. When their health bar is depleted because of injuries, survivors are KO and wounded. Items and skills are designed to cure that status. Means they were never used. The state of combat is such this did not happen, even though most of the times, healing items to heal injured survivors on the field were not used.
  • Ran shelters with over 20 people in them, that is a lot of people. That does not include the animals that can join the shelter that add to the food consumption.
    I was tempted to get rid of survivors by getting them killed because beyond one point, they only represent useless manpower. Never did it but I was tempted.
  • Despite this huge load on food consumption, starvation was not experienced. Shelters were run with one week, ten days of food in advance. Low quality food, like rats or spoiled food can be found when scavenging and later stocked in the shelter, taking a drain on the survivors' morale. It is one feature. Never faced that situation to decide over this feature since the food situation was extremelly comfortable.
  • Shelter morale hovering over 700 mark. If I remember well, the starting situation is around -150.
  • Most of survivors: happy or content. The lower condition was my PC (okay) for some reasons.
    Consequence: crisis situations due to low morale (usually triggered around -200, -300 morale) coupled with disgruntled survivors were experienced through self engineering .
    When morale is low, frictions between survivors lead to burst that might escalate. PC skills like negotiation or leadership help mending that. Consequence: leadership/negotiation skills lose their meaning as these situations are not experienced other than by the player's determination to create them.
  • Combat: usually used the primary attack of a weapon and only that. Tried to fiddle with the burst mode of military grade weapons but it does not look as it is implemented. The single shot mode does the job, so…
  • Periodically, survivors come to see the PC to require a favour. Including going there, find that, upgrade this etc… Many times, when they came, it was already done. Once, the task was completed ten days ago…
  • Character developpment: over 30 points in skills were retained and not allocated.
    Perks in one skill have three levels: first costs 4 points, the second 8 additional points and the last 18 additional points.
    Points were not allocated because it means nothing.

Nothing you would expect from this kind of products.
 
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This game isn't a typical crpg. The main goal of the game is to keep the inhabitants of your shelter happy. The game is less about combat and loot acquisition; as those things are extremely repetitive. Most items are to boost Shelter morale, then there are special items that boost a particular character's morale. The rest is weapon, armor, ammo, medical supplies. etc.

I found the lack of any type of animation inside the shelter to be a major downer. Once you find a new inhabitant, they are static inside the shelter. Only scavenge team members move around and they don't talk except for barks; at least 90% of the time.

This is a story game, like Torment or Winter Voices. There is plenty of combat and loot acquisition and exploration but it is very poorly done. You must like finding out what makes the various inhabitants tick, to enjoy this game. I've thought about going back to it and just giving my scavenge team unlimited ammo so that combat could be over very quickly. Set up a choke point and fire the loudest weapon you can find :)

Edit: for those that don't know, story is very low on my list of crpg requirements. I probably haven't finished any game that is more about story than anything else. I get bored :)
 
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We know, but we also know when you say something is dull, repetitive or like you noticed here poorly done... Well at least me... That usually means let'd skip this game till "better days". :D
 
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