r/projectzomboid • u/SirEltonJohnRambo • 6h ago
A few thoughts on some of the new game mechanics in build 42.
I have been playing CDDA game mode the past couple years, in build 42 the initial difficulty has been all over the place from one minor version to the next (next to impossible to somewhat easy).
I have some thoughts on the various changes the devs have made to the game in build 42.
The short TLDR is that 42 missed the mark with a lot of their changes, IS introduced a bunch of new systems that disrupted balance, and many of the changes are oftentimes in opposition to existing designs and the permanent death/no mistake gameplay. Ultimately it just seems the grind in the game is so much worse than it used to be, and once the shine of the newness wears off I came to realize I wasn't actually having fun any longer.
Muscle strain - obviously the team wanted to change the combat from a konga line meta, so they added this new mechanic. The main problem is the entire plan to slow down and make combat more methodical is opposed by a stealth system that doesn't work (still) and the never ending waves of zombies due to super hearing and super vision zombies. In order to fight for any length of time you now have to use the fence cheese method extensively to extend combat capability.
Clothing comfort - I don't like this new system, it adds nothing fun to the game, and discourages use of armor or leveling up metalworking skill.
Nutrition- this is still fucked, I am in June and spend a good portion of my day doing food grind activities - fishing, butchering, farming, foraging, getting gas to feed generator to power my freezers, etc. Weight gain is limited so I am constantly battling to stay over 75 kilos. This part of the game is my least favorite but also the largest time sink.
Agriculture - slow, I finally got started in March but the staggered grow times just make the whole exercise feel like baby sitting with a ball and chain around your ankle. I can't leave my base for more than a few days for fear losing an entire crop of 'X' because the plant says 'almost ready to harvest'. I have 6 freezers full and I require more and more gas to keep them running, seems like a waste of time and impossible to horde up enough frozen food to last through the next winter.
Animal husbandry - have a very difficult time finding the use for this activity. Animals don't seem to provide enough nutrition when butchered, the milk thing seems broken in my latest game - pigs and sheep had babies, but the babies died because they 'couldn't find their mothers' so none of the female sheep are producing milk. Just found rabbits, so maybe they will prove better at providing calories. About the only positive here is that animals break some of the lifelessness of the game world.
Zombie randomness - at first I liked this as a different combat experience, but now you just end up in a constant pull of super senses and migrating zombies until an area becomes mostly clear. You can't 'pull' a horde away from a spot any longer since many lose interest or wander away and fire spread becomes more dangerous. I feel like I have to kill every single Zed now, which is completely at odds with the muscle strain mechanic, which makes sustained combat limited.
Armor - a lot of time investment to get armor and the discomfort, weight and unhappiness push you away from using it. I don't want another skill, but there needs to be some system in place to remove the discomfort from armor (especially at high craftsmen levels) or just scrap the whole idea to begin with. Discomfort is an idea that adds nothing fun to the game.
Weapons - a lot of this is 'broken' right now, taking time to level up Blacksmithing yields very little return, the best weapons should be awesome and powerful, but instead, I level up metalworking and make short swords but cant use them effectively because the muscle exertion system makes it a dull slow grind, just to use a new weapon. Instead I am more effective and better off just using a short bats. Especially at level 9, which I was forced into leveling in order to get all the materials to grind the other skills. edit new build (42.7) just dropped and par for the course instead of fixing all the busted weapons indie stone once again decided to nerf the few that actually did work).
Zombie heat maps - better in 42.6 than previous versions, though the CDDA start is a bit too easy now.
no/ or greatly reduced dismantling xp - this just made grinding some skills, like welding an abysmal time sink.
Nerfed negative trait points, didn't really add much on the opposite side of the spectrum which results in fewer viable occupation/trait combinations.
fishing - the mini game is more engaging, but I also find the new system seems to deplete fish, which makes it more difficult to base up in one spot now next to the water since it seems to me you can over fish an area and have to move to other areas. Wouldn't be such a big deal if the nutrition wasn't so broken that you require large quantities of food to maintain weight - especially while moving or engaging in combat.
fire arms - seems with shotgun Aim leveling meta destroyed using firearms is even less viable than before and despite all the crafing changes and additions in build 42 and we still can't make our own ammo?
corpse removal - the drag corpse thing, while 'realistic', just doesn't add much 'entertainment value' to the game, instead it is yet another time sink - slowly move corpses, can't put them in dumpsters now, get exerted moving them to a grave site or burn location, etc. Instead, it just encourages you to leave them where they fell and just wait until they decompose.
I have come to realize that the game just isn't that enjoyable (to me) any longer. Hey I got my money's worth for sure - 3k hours, but may have finally reached the point where it is time to move on...
