Generation Zero: A Missed Opportunity | Feedback on what made the game great and what could have been

Feedback/Feature Requests
1

Dear devs, I hope you will read this and take it as the constructive criticism it is meant to be.

I think about GZ more than I’d like to admit. Back in 2020 I played the game for the first time and got lost in the mysterious, beautiful and huge world. The game was rough around the edges, to say the least, but most of that was down to limitations in the game engine; if you’ve ever played TheHunter: Call of the Wild you’ll know what I mean.

Since then the devs have fixed and polished A LOT of those rough edges. Inventory management, key binding, even just making it easier to pick up that pesky bandage that you previously had to dance on top of a sink to get. They have worked around an engine that was clunky, but could provide a world at a scale and detail level most other engines can’t even do today. And herein lies where I think GZ got it all horribly wrong.

You see, it turns out that an engine highly built around a hunting game also works great when you’re the one being hunted. Much like in TheHunter your best friend is your binoculars and your stealth, and the feeling of sneaking through the woods, avoiding enemy patrols, observing them, strategizing and planning around them was something the game absolutely shined at like nothing else.
You were a squishy human up against an army of robots, so you had to use the environment to your advantage and plan ahead, look for enemy weak spots - all the while unravelling the mystery permeating a world so meticulously crafted and so detailed that you could suspend your disbelief. It was a gaming experience niché and akin to my old days, when DayZ was but a mod. Something truly special.

But then came the updates.
The game caught a lot of flak for the clunky, slow and some would even say, boring gameplay. That is a valid take if you want a fast-paced action shooter, but I think the devs got lost in the criticism the game was receiving and in a knee-jerk reaction, tried to make the game something it was not and probably never will be, in an attempt to salvage the game’s rating and improve sales.
They looked at how they could change the game to make it better, and lacked the confidence to be different from what people might expect by doubling down on what the game excels at.

I have been playing the April 2020 update quite a bit recently. Most of you here have probably heard of the terribly overpowered gonzo AI where all enemies could engage, keep you down with covering fire, flank you and generally make your life miserable.
To all that, I must say I disagree. The AI in that version is miles ahead of what the game has had since, where the robot takes turns shooting and otherwise just stands and stares at you. I believe the AI works like you would expect an army of robots to behave. Is it hard? Sure, but it isn’t impossible, because the game gives you everything you need to survive. Lowering the accuracy of the AI would have been a miles better compromise, rather than limiting it to one enemy shooting at you at a time.

A lot has been added since that update and aside from finally adding more enemy types, I honestly don’t think any of the DLC or gameplay mechanics have improved on what made the game great, aside from polish and bugfixes.
The FNIX Rising DLC specifically marked the first step in the wrong direction; adding a bunch of humming structures that don’t actually do anything, have any meaningful exploration or loot value and most importantly just stand out like a sore thumb in an otherwise beautifully crafted world.

Since then the game has been stuffed with a bunch of weapons and skins that don’t really play any different than what the game had at release, just more junk for the loot tables. The map has been absolutely stuffed to the brim with enemies in such a way that leaves no room for thoughtful gameplay, but only lends itself to go guns blazing against bullet sponge enemies that seem to have the AI of a brick wall. Base building with a wave defence mechanism that only serves to grind resources and an ever-increasing capacity for loot as the game just absolutely showers you with everything you need.

All that might look like improvements on paper, but the result is a game that strips away all the things it had going for it in favour of adding gameplay mechanics that frankly don’t work well at all with the engine behind the game.
I don’t believe GZ will ever be a good fast-paced action shooter with base building - and that is not for lack of trying from the devs.
I do however believe that GZ has so much untapped potential in its earlier form, albeit niché, but we have seen that even, and maybe especially, niché games, can do very well.

So here is my plea to the devs.
Go play the April 2020 update again. Rediscover your game and what actually made it stand out from the rest because you still have an opportunity to make the game something very special.

I hope that will convince you to, if not change course, at least provide an opportunity for players to experience a version of GZ that had all the greatness of the April 2020 release with all the amazing polishing and bug fixing you have implemented since then.

Thanks for reading!

6 Likes
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I agree - I’ve written similar comments in the past few years. They had something no other game I played in the past 30 years had, and they got rid of it.

I already recommended the addition of a ‘beta’ selection to the Steam version of the game so like-minded players could at least replay the older editions without jumping through loops, but as of now, there was no interest from players or devs to add that option. I still hope they come around to add it one day, but I don’t hold my breath.

1 Like
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That would probably be the easiest way of providing a version with an older status of the game.
If it’s even possible. We don’t know if this version still exists.

And don’t forget that this would just be for Steam users, none of all the others.

Because of that an ingame option/switch would be a better solution for the players, but probably a more difficult one for the devs.

We also don’t know if the devs could easily restore the old AI for the current version of the game, as many aspects of the game changed since then and too many of the code probably affects each other.

I personally don’t know the April 2020 AI.
For me the current one is ok. Yes, there are some aspects that could be improved in my eyes. But it shouldn’t just be more difficult. That just should be a matter of the difficulty settings instead of just giving the machines more health/armor, like

//Reaction time:
if (difficulty.equals(“adventure”)) {
reactiontime.setvalue(1.5);
}
if (difficulty.equals(“skirmish”)) {
reactiontime.setvalue(1.0);
}
if (difficulty.equals(“guerilla”)) {
reactiontime.setvalue(0.5);
}

If the AI was smarter in general, that instead could be a good point for all difficulties.

I personally would also love to have GZ being split into chapters, while each chapter should show the world depending on how it was at the time the updates arrived, but bound to specific story events, so that we can see and feel the changing world of GZ.

Edit: here is my original idea:

The table could be expanded now, I think.
It should also show when which revamps should happen and could be expanded by the addition of motorbikes and flakmopeds, as well as the base-building/introduction of FNIX bases…

2 Likes
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Nah, that version exists. It requires some fiddling with Steam console commands, but the entire history of the game is on the Steam servers’ depot list. You can even track the update history with external tools like SteamDB.

I’d love to see a partial ‘beta’ selection - maybe the first released version of the game (or at least the first stable updated version before additional content was added), then maybe the version when Alpine Unrest was first introduced, the April 2020 edition, the FNIX Rising update, the Landfall update, etc. I’d love to check out the old grid-based inventory, the pre-remodeled towns in various regions, kinda like a digital archeology crash course.

For console players, that’s probably not in the cards, but I don’t know how versioning on PS4/5 or Xbox systems works nowadays, and I can imagine a similar approach to the Steam system on other platforms, though I don’t know if there is any user-accessible component to it.

1 Like
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i recently played my disc version, :hot_face: with no updates, first time in 4 years, to dang hard, & the loot everything in a area, headaches, I’m sticking with this version, & hope they make a disc version one day