Needs Re-Spawning Thread - Survivalist

--Respawning--

With the exception of inside the players base this game should have respawning. A small number of zombies, say maybe 4, should periodicly, and randomly respawn at thier original starting position every 24 game hours with new random loot. It makes sence that more zombies would eventually be wandering into the area after a while and not just roaming horde packs. This would also help the game be a little more sandboxish. That way if a player wanted they could remove the time constraint givin by the Love route of wining by choosing power or money and letting Alice Ivers die off. Sit around at base for a day or two killing off hordes, looters, and the zombie respawns, to collect thier loot and build up thier stocks of supplies over time, befor continuing on with any of the other missions.

--Gifting--

Also I think some tweaking needs to be done with the gifting and approval system. Its the apocolips. Gifts and giving would be rare and considered very special. Therefor it shouldn't take 10 gifts to reach 100 from 0 on approval, maybe 4 or 5 at max. A 20 or 25 point reward per gift rather than 10. There's no more chistmas or holidays going on, there wouldn't be, so geting a gift from some one would make you much more happy than what the current setting is.

--The Vests--

There also seems to be a issue with the bullet resistant vests. Apon taking a head, leg, or arm shot the vests are geting damaged. I've noticed that when one of my characters gets shot in the head, legs, or arms, or if I'm takeing out looters at my gates with sniper rifle shots to the head, the vests are either damaged or destroyed. This should not occur since the vests do not protect the head, legs, or arms. Also the vests themselves should have a crafting option, so that you can combine two damaged vests to create one with the combined durability of the two damaged ones.

--Skill Training--

Im trying to increase each of my survivors skills, especially fitness, but I'm haveing a tough time keeping track of how quickly they are increasing. Would it be posible to add about 8 of those little white lines that are on the needs bars bellow the skills, to the skills bars, like 1 line for every 10 percent so we can keep track more easily? For example with fitness, I train them as though they are on a tredmill and just have them run into the side of a cliff or wall some where at 4 times game speed for 1 minute. Then I stop and see just how far the fitness experience bar moved so I can calculate how many more minutes I need to have them run at 4 times speed to gain the next level up. It would make it easier to judge how far the bar moved if it had those lines in it.

--Weight Training--

I'm thinking the amount of weight the survivors are carrying should have a bearing on how fast thier fitness experience goes up while sprinting. There should be a bonus boost to fitness exp gain for every 5 pounds of weight that they carry of at least 2% faster exp gain or more. So for example if they are carrying 20 pounds of weight while sprinting, they should get a boost to fitness exp gain of 8% faster than normal. This is after all how the military trains its people. Not only do they run obsticle courses and etc., but they do so carrying those heavy packs that they would have in the field, to increase there stamina and strength at a faster rate. So it only makes sence that the same should apply here. This way if players wanted a spacific survivor to gain fitness exp faster, all they would have to do is equip them with the bigger backpack and fill it up with as much weight as posible and sprint around with them for a while. With the large backpack equiped and useing fitness books to max your fitness out, allowing 155 pounds to be carried, would provide a maximum of 62% faster than normal fitness exp gain while sprinting. But the amount of weight carried while sprinting should also effect how fast you stamina is drained. Only makes sence that if your carrying alot of weight you are going to tire out faster.

--Target Practice--

In real life, to increase your own firearms, and fitness skill, you train with man made objects and targets, yet in the game, while you can target, shoot, punch, an kick signs on the road and the targets at the shooting range in Dejado, you don't get any exp when you hit them. I think you should get just as much firearms exp for hiting them with gun fire and fitness exp for kicking n punching them, as you currently get for shooting an beating up zombies. Even in the tutorial part of the game Joe says, "My aim sucks, I should practice on that road sign." Yet when he does, nothing is gained from it.

--Farming--

There is obviously more to farming than just watering. You have harvesting, and planting. Yet my survivors gain no experience for harvesting or planting. Only when watering the crops do they seem to gain any exp. This makes no sence at all, and should definatly be changed.

Edited by: tgbowman

I'm not planning to make any major changes to this game, but once online co-op is done (which should be pretty soon) I'm intending to start making a sequel. So it's always interesting to read people's ideas.

Anyway, to quickly answer some of these:

- Respawning: Zombies do actually slowly respawn into an area after it's been cleared, it does take a while though.

- Gifting: Yeah the gifting is a bit of a hack, would like to have less of it. It's basically there because I wasn't able to produce enough quests and dialog.

- The Vests: The looters get spawned with vests that aren't all at full armour, it's randomised. To imply that they would have been in combat before they met you.

- Skill Training/Target Practice: Ideally I think you ought to be able to assign people to 'practice a skill' just as you can assign them to guard duty, farming etc. Then they would just do it in the background while the player goes off on quests etc. So the player themselves isn't stuck doing a mindless repetitive task. The game design shouldn't encourage people to directly control those sorts of things themselves, as it's not fun gameplay.

- Weight Training/Farming: yeah, I probably should do that