Dear Devs: please stop destroying everything

Feedback/Feature Requests
21

I understand the devastation part of the land. Of course it’s a shame see a beautiful environment go to waste, but that’s reality. The Devs can preserve a lot of places and destroy places with importance to war, since that’s how you’d go about winning against humanity. Even humanity is nasty against itself.

I’m really confused about the part where this is a concern of realism for the game, when things like melee get added and we go smacking tanks with baseball bats… Where machines drop human weapons or full-on suits for humans that we just get to wear and make us stronger. I could imagine that we teenagers are really smart and after scavenging the machine, suddenly think of stripping parts away and making our own suit, but that’s never said or shown that this is the intent. There’s never a say or show how things really work. The timeline is the perfect example by how things change around the world and buildings aren’t in the same layout as last update. Add the devastation and you have to ask, yet can’t really say when how or at what time something changed in the game’s timeline. Things just change and it’s hard to say whether the world is aging, making any new arrival that makes it to shore alive stuck back in time or is new to this time or whether the changes are all made on this one timeframe and time hasn’t passed. Then again the DLCs tell us time has passed and you’re back to square one.

There USED to be the feeling that this world is unique and grounded. The developers CAN and HAVE made important changes that are worth, like map overhauls, but we don’t understand how we’re to perceive the change for the game’s universe. They did make experimental grade weapons that made some resemblance to an end-game, but there is no actual endgame, so it ends up being redundant. Capping the experimentals behind level 25 from Rivals is a good move for the game, but why or how isn’t explained. Why are there rivals? Why only after a certain level threshold? Why or what’s witch challenges? Why do we do them for ourselves? They’re not tied to any in-game lore or characters, so how do those make sense to us? Why are we silent protagonists, but through text in certain missions or through walkie-talkies the characters somehow gather our information. Veronika found out about Elsa and left, but we never said anything. Anita and the walkie-talkie situation was strange, but at least that illusion worked better.

So far I’ve seen short-term solutions that eventually will need an overhaul and it feels like the same steps taken through launch, where the archipelago had to be overhauled. It was for the better. I loved the game and the setting, but recently it’s been rushed story, shallow content and waste of potential. The reaper makes people happy, but I don’t feel it’s any special at all since that’s a reskin sent out in the big bad world, behind another cap and has a shield. The only unique aspect of it. If only that Reaper required certain actions from the player to be summoned.

Imagine if the FNIX outposts did something. Imagine if some were available for the base game or DLC player just to show how they work and base game players didn’t get confused. Now imagine if the searchlights by those outposts did anything. Imagine if you managed to take out outposts, ruining FNIX’s control over nearby outposts makes FNIX lose control over resources it gathers… Then it has to send out the big bad reaper to clean the field from it’s obstruction (player) or distract the player enough for FNIX’s outposts to be securely locked again.

Sorry about my ramble, but I feel our concern is invisible.

9 Likes
22

The sudden overnight changes can be only explained in three ways, sir…

  1. A fake reality we are in, either as test subject, or being trained without our knowledge.
  2. We’re being shifted between alternate realities.
    -) Smurfs.
  3. Aliens altering Earth (Terraforming).

In all seriousness though.

I have the same feeling.
Many asked in the past for things that simply were bad ideas, but those got implemented either way.
Bicycles, Plundra, Exp Weapons, human NPC’s,…
These things made the game itself much worse.
I had advocated against this, explaining as to why it would be a bad idea to implement this and that, but they figured these requests more important than the game.

In the end, that is their right, their job to make decisions.
All we can do… is move along, sir…
It is what it is…

3 Likes
23

It’s not easy to move on from something you’re so invested in, but I feel for myself it’d be the better option. For a while I was just able to set my own limitations and ignore the issues, but it all piles up.

Yeah, I feel every outcome in explaining that would sound a lazy solution and cliche, but as far as I could read in to the environment and the story presented, it’s not a cliche story or something made by a wannabe. The story hiding behind layers, never being on the nose and letting the player be the natural cause of disturbance would’ve been such a great formula for an intriguing game. If gameplay lacked, lore made up for it. Now the story narrative is taking a toll form the rushed narratives.

For some things I can see what I can agree and disagree as we’ll have our own opinions, but yeah… anything that the vocal majority asked, they got. The thing is, with a crowd that keeps just adding stuff to their fantasy of ‘cool’ is not healthy for the initial image I saw when experiencing this game. Experimental weapons don’t make much sense, but could be made sense of - if the Devs spent the time thinking how this addition affects the universe, not just purely gameplay. I heavily disagree with melee implementation and slightly with the NPCs, but if they were done right, it would’ve been a much different story. The addition of an NPC or two isn’t so bad, the addition of experimentals isn’t bad, plundra isn’t a bad mediator, but it was all implemented so simplistically with the bare minimum to satisfy the crowd. None of these are explained, which they could be. Right now experimentals and clothing (even bycicles!) are gifts from FNIX for being a good teenager, humans are life-size creepy dolls… or you’re the creepy kid they choose to ignore. Plundra is the Void. Melee weapons are ‘haha wacky fun times’ where papa FNIX goes easy on you to let you have your fun.

If experimental weapons were specific modules or components, like at the very first time where you had a chance of preserving vision modules from a destroyed seeker, where you’d now use a crafting table to finish an upgrade with your weapon, it’d create a component of scavenging to make sure your weapon is ready for the upgrade, your component let you make the upgrade and there… You, as the player, have gone through the process of finding a 5 crown weapon, found the component for the weapon to upgrade, making it that you at least went through the intended progression of scavenging weapons, used the new crafting system and have also made sense in the universe how we’ve come to experimentals.

That’s one example how to create a sort of endgame, but then we’d need to solve how Rivals came to light… Since the developers are doing overhauls to environments, maybe it’s a good time to fix the base of the game in a way that grounds itself once more.

3 Likes
24

Really like this idea.

1 Like
25

That, absolutely, sir.

This contradicts the above, sir.
Originally these were not in game.
And that unique sensation is destroyed.

And though I am a heavy supporter of the Team… I cannot but agree.
That on top of it made it worse even.

Yup.
Aside, who on Earth would go into survival… dressed like Edward Scissorhands (Well, Freddie Kruger)???
GOD!!!

I went even further in another post.
Remove everything above 2C, turn that into loose parts, and have this to crafting.
But folks figured that was too much.
They want more crafting, but no, we’re too lazy.
I’m lost… them Uu-Maans make no sense…

1 Like
26

I must agree to @knobitobis initial post. I almost don’t play GZ anymore and I guess that a few people in here is slightly annoyed that I haven’t had the decency to just leave the forum. Truth is that I loved the game. A lot! Until rivals and experimental weapons arrived. Then my affection cooled down a bit. I simply couldn’t make sense of that. The initial game was almost mystical, magical and still so genuine … an empty world to explore and a make sense of. An enigma to figure out in a setting that brought me right back to the swedish countryside. It was almost like being there in real life, feeling this intense lonelyness and desolation. A feeling that cannot be emphasized by adding more graphic destruction. Less is so much more! I was on an adventure … cautiously exploring.

Now it is just mainstream. Find stuff, craft it, make a 1% bullet-proof t-shirt … and go find some more. Passing time.

To me GZ is the story that got lost somewhere, an adventure that became arcade. But then again, I’m surely inclined towards less main-stream games, and I appreciate that me and my likes contribution when buying a game like this can’t remotely finance the cost of developing and maintaining it.

The story of GZ is probably lost on me now, but I’m still struggling to find out, who it is for exactly. Will there be a mystery to uncover or should we just keep fighting and crafting forever …

It is not a bad game. Not at all. It just happened to become something else than I expected. And as such I guess that it is already too late to adress the title of this thread.

9 Likes
27

VERY well said!!!
Respect, sir!!!

1 Like
28

What if they released a Core Version?
Back to ‘ye ol’ times’?
I would surely get that one!!!

29

I agree with everything you said. GZ was a rough diamond, but it was a unique one and a game I truly loved. And the setting and mystery were a huge part of that.

With each passing update it becomes less GZ and more of ‘open world FPS greatest hits’ with design elements and mechanics pulled from other (and with the exception of Fallout 76, less buggy) titles.

I still feel GZ has potential for greatness, and I know you can’t please everyone, but… the more they try to please everyone by importing mechanics from other titles the less inclined I am to pick it back up after I’ve finished off the new content.

Will I buy the next DLC? I genuinely don’t know. GZ is becoming less of what I loved, and more like titles I can just play elsewhere. I expected it to evolve over time, but just not in the ways they’re taking it.

4 Likes
30

Yeah, but leaving the progress stagnant can also get tiring. It’s never easy to find either one or the other solution be completely fit with everyone. A good example of not being able to easily satisfy everyone is the current state of everything in GZ. Veterans and the release crowd has lost sight of the old gem, but current crowd keeps asking and receiving the ‘cool’ shoot-shoot content. Remember when weapon ammunition was scarce, so you took your time with each encounter and couldn’t just go on rampages?

What I meant with these changes not being so bad is that as an idea, it’s a good idea IF done right. Once again I feel like I’m not conveying what I mean good enough. Take Plundra for example. Overall a storage unit to store your items, so you don’t come overburdened with gear. Currently it’s such a lazy little box at every single safehouse, no matter if it’s a private house. For this specific example, imagine no plundra and imagine the massive variety of weapons the game has. The more the variety of items, the larger the choice for loot there is, but the harder it is to find specifically what you look for. Because machines have loot on them, they can drop different items. More items means the drops are going to be less predictable, so if you only need one specific ammo type for your one specific weapon that you can carry - it’s such an annoying gamble for finding the right ammo for your right gun. The plundra is here to make sure that whenever the devs add more items that need to be collected in order to craft or other guns to excite the player, there is space to put away other things. A storage space or room to place your items (plundra) isn’t a bad idea, since you would eventually get annoyed how much loot you have to leave behind and gamble on each machine to fight the proper loot you actually need. The issue is that it wasn’t implemented without limitation. Every safehouse has this plundra, every plundra stores the same loot, the capacity is massive and it’s so easy to just keep ‘Looting all’ items, then just dumping it in the storage container. If storage containers were scattered to specific locations and each had their limited capacity, the location would mean much more to you, because you choose to store your items there. Imagine storing your sniper rifles in a cabin safehouse, but all the heavy explosive gear be held in a warehouse deep inside a city. The cabin area is mostly quiet and you can lay low there without having to carry the big gear, but the city is crawling with harvesters and tanks that need the big booms.

The idea isn’t bad, the execution is. If we held dear to the old way the game played, people would still slowly get bored of the same experience over and over.

Perhaps that’s an option and I see why people may be not interested in that, but if it’s about refurbishing or cleaning the weapon, replacing parts to upgrade the weapon, then it’d be a good change. As teenagers, how the hell do we know how to assemble weapons? This is why fully crafting a weapon from scratch wouldn’t be the full aspect, but finding parts to improve the gun would be the main idea. I could agree on that :slight_smile:

I know this feeling and can’t help feeling a bit silly for liking the feeling. Things would eventually need a shift in narrative or drive the narrative forward, as you explore it all in this sense of wonder, but what’s left after you’ve been everywhere? I feel that the gradual destruction or gradual take-over has to happen to not show that we’re stuck in a time capsule, but it still feels like… even if the world changed, did the time change or are we still stuck in this time capsule?

This holds so true to me too. It went from gritty to arcade-ish. Playing regularly, even on guerrilla, I turn off my brain and the time just slowly passes. I feel the entire statement was put together way better without the uneccesary ramble that I am showing here.

I agree with this and where I feel that whatever people think is ‘cool’ to be added is where this is going downhill. People get these ideas from already familiar concepts and the very first canvas that this game was, it was new to me. It wasn’t a typical survival game or typical shooter.

4 Likes
31

You guys seem to echo what I said back when the June update / FNIX Rising hit - I’m not so sure what to make of these changes still…

On the one hand, the regions aside from the archipelago were kind of samey and cookie-cutter in their approach to environmental details pre June update, but on the other hand (as I wrote back then), there was that unsettling feeling of a sudden catastrophe that happened while the player was away. You return from wherever, and the houses are empty, the food still on the table, cars parked, and a few dead bodies indicating that some sudden intrusion/invasion took place, abducting/evacuating/killing every living being. Now it’s a war-torn landscape, destroyed buildings and dead people everywhere, buildings and hideouts sprinkled all over the place where none were before.

The dread is gone, replaced with a ‘let’s kill all the robots’ feeling. I’m not sure how the devs plan to handle the story from here, but I wish they’d focus more on the atmosphere. It’s the one important thing that kept me playing most of the games I own, and frankly, Gen Zero has lost me. I’m still playing the May version as of now, but that one has its fair share of issues, and obviously newer content and online play are going bye-bye that way.

3 Likes
32

Hopefully the North Coast and Marshland regions will be less destroyed.

33

I’m actually playing the May form starting at now, yet that one has something reasonable of issues, and clearly fresher substance and online play are going bye-bye that way.

34

Honestly y’all I’ve read through this topic and the way y’all have described things brings me back to seeing people first play it and running for their lives and yelling. I got the game after seeing that and remember how tricky fights used to be. Now I don’t even have an experimental but I’ve got 20000 rounds of ammo without the ammo craft update and fear nothing because I can just respawn and go kill it. Someone said on the forum that the more you die the less you care and without death penalties it doesn’t matter. Imagine the dread you would have in a fight if you lost your inventory if you died and had to go fight to get it back. Sorry for rambling thanks for listening if you were interested. :+1:t3:

5 Likes
35

I agree with OP. They are destroying the game, or evolving it ? I miss the wonder of discovery in a beautiful world and do feel like we have fallen into Fallout 4. The wonder and fear of the first two releases are mostly gone now and you are left with a brutal world to struggle and rage against.

36

That was me, sir.
I also suggested to have for instance all stats halved, and it would recuperate in about 10 to 15 minutes.
This way, folks would no longer dive into battle head first, die a billion times (cause it has no meaning, who cares?) and still get the game done.

I would like to say: A war torn land does not look like a well maintained museum, sir…

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37

I guess we all have made the suggestion of having weight in death.
As I’ve stated this really long ago in this post

38

I didn’t mean to beat a dead horse by saying that about a death penalty my apologies.

39

Ah, yes, many brought that up in the past, sir, agreed.
I did not mean to “take credit”, but take blame.

???
No need sir?
You did not do anything wrong?
Au contraire, it is good that you voice your opinion!!! :slight_smile:

Keep doing that, sir!!! :wink:

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40

For me the creativity of the devs is not destroying the game. I love their surprising new path.

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