Large Ideas Post- Technical, Tactical and Survival

Split into three catagories, tactical, technical and survival. I have only just got past/completed the first region but I want to get these off my chest. Mostly mechanics based suggestions, as I feel this is whats needed to make things feel a little more lively in this already quite good yet slow burn of a game.

TECHNICAL-

  1. Safehouse Freedom and Upgrading- Safehouses are no longer static but, with a portable radio, the player can make any house, building or compound a safe house.
  • Safehouses will be given a rank based on size of building/compound. Lv1 for the smallest, Lv 3 for the biggest.
  • Larger safehouses get more slots for useful things, like the bike workbench or the reloading workbench (a station that allows you to convert ammo into other types of ammo) as some examples. Maybe also defensive items like sentry guns or radar? Also camo netting to make them less easy for machines to find.
    -Bunkers with War rooms are classed as Lv4 safehouses.
  1. Crafting- The crafting of items from other items and raw resources. Like taking a bandage from a FAK and using it to make a sticky flare from a flare. I don’t want to go in detail here as you likely already know several games that implement these kinds of systems, all i will say though is keep it fairly simple and don’t make it too powerful. The player shouldn’t be able to craft a machine gun from a toaster and a trashed bike for example. This should give players a bit of freedom to prioritise certain supplies and can give items a use beyond their original function (There will always be trash loot, but hopefully a bit less).

  2. Containers- Escape from Tarkov style containers can allow you to contain more items in less space, but each container will only accept certain types of items. An Ammunition Box will only take bullets for example.

TACTICAL-

  1. The flow of power- Robots now have force levels in each region. Player actions influence this machine force level. Higher levels of robot power will see more patrols of more machines with tougher machines as well. Not only that, but machines will destroy loot spots and lay booby traps in higher force regions as a ‘scorched earth’ strategy. A region on max machine force level should be a real challenge to survive in, especially for the lone survivor. Being spotted, fighting machine patrols, completing missions and fast travelling to safehouses in the region will raise a regions force level. However, if these activitys are not happening all that often within a region, the force level will lower over time as machines divert forces to ‘hotter’ regions. The occasional skirmish and fast travel should be okay, but fighting all you come across will be met with greater challenge.

  2. Safehouse Destruction- Safehouses can now be destroyed if found by machines. Lv1 safehouses, being small, are less easily found than Lv3 ones. Urban safehouses are a bit riskier than isolated, rural safehouses. But by far, the biggest factor influencing safety of a safehouse, is the machine force level of the region its in. If the player is present they can prevent their safehouses destruction by defending it. Most of the time however, the player will likely be away. If the safehouse is used heavily, robots may instead lay an ambush and wait for the survivors return.

  3. Enemy Strongholds- Robots will make ‘safehouses’ of their own. These strongholds will bolster robot forces in the region. There will usually at least be one stronghold in every region, even on low force level. However, as force level rises the bots can make up to three per region and they will be more heavily defended. Assualting and destroying a stronghold will cripple robot forces and reduce the force level of the region, destroying relays will also reduce the force level but by far less. Rivals, if damaged but not destroyed, will retreat to a stronghold to repair and rearm. Giving the player a window of opportunity to finish them off or risk them coming back even stronger.

  4. Seige- Lv4 safehouses (War room bunkers) cannot just be destroyed by a passing patrol. Instead, when discovered, a countdown will begin to a seige. The player will be notified and may have from 12 hours to 3 days to prepare defences (in-game time). When the timer hits 0, the seige begins. A massive assualt on the bunker occurs, the players will have to use all sorts of defenses and powerful weapons to keep the tide of machinery back. If the war room is lost, the players lose. If they hold off the assualt, the players win. This is supposed to be a huge thing, 4 high level players recommended. If the machines win, the bunker immediately becomes a powerful robot stronghold. If the players win, a chest will spawn in the war room with the ‘spoils of war’, good chances for seriously good stuff to spawn inside. That and the failure of such a large assualt damages machine force in the region.

SURVIVAL-

  1. Food and Drink- Now hear me out, I don’t mean like in your typical ‘babysit’ survival game. Here, you cannot starve or dehydrate to death. It won’t kill you, no. But there will be buffs and debuffs depending on their levels instead. Water affects max stamina, stamina regeneration and movement speed. Food affects max health, injury recovery and action speed/reload speed. When both are kept high, you will slowly regenerate health out of combat and gain a buff to exp gains from all sources. When food is critically low, you don’t go down anymore but instead ‘give up’ instantly upon health reaching 0. When water is critically low, you cannot sprint.

  2. Health Revamp- You can now gain special afflictions from certain attacks, the only thing that is required for these injuries to heal is time but that time can be sped up by two things. Firstly, specilised medical items and secondly, rest. Rest being that you use a bed in a safehouse to sleep, takes a bit off the food/water bars but cuts time to heal for any injury by half. Note: there is a chance upon taking damage from certain sources to get these afflictions, its never a guarantee. Resting and specilised medicine can be used in combination to rapidly treat special injuries. All times here are IRL times.

  • Bleeding: quite common, can get it from just about any injury. Damage over time, fades after 20 seconds, stopped instantly by using any first aid kit.
  • Crippling Injury: Obtained from excessive fall damage as well as explosive or melee attacks. Slows movment speed and makes you easier to knock down. Fades in 2 minutes, use a split to reduce to 15 seconds.
  • Severe Burns: obtained a bit more rarely from from explosive and fire based attacks. Damage from all sources is amplified by 50%, takes 20 minutes to heal, burn salve cuts down to 5 minutes
  • Broken Bones: can be obtained rarely from melee and explosive based attacks. All damage taken increased by 20%, sprinting causes slight damage every second and you are easily knocked down. Takes an hour to heal, cut down to 20 minutes using a splint.

Final Notes:

  • Don’t add temperature as a survival element. This is not the long dark and I don’t want to have to kill my style cause it got a bit chilly.
  • I don’t want the health system to be too overbearing or get too much in the way of combat. But right now I feel its just a bit too arcadey and easy on the player and could do with a bit more depth. I feel similarly about food and drink.

But yeah, this is a really good game so far. A slow burn sure, but pretty darn good.

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Hello welcome to the forum , your survival food and drink idea is spot on i thought the same idea a while back , you have explained it very well , Buffs effect , no thirsty or starving effects just whatever Buffs are thought of , yep liking them sentry guns aswell . :+1:

I really like the way you’ve written this and split in to segments. A good read.

What interests me the most are a couple of these points with the rest rather being something either too large in scope to change for core elements or would begin being tedious to a large sum. All just an opinion.

These interest me:

  1. Safehouse freedom. This point, I’d love to see. Taking the radio a step further and making a permanent cozy place is something I’ve been asking in streams and now see here too. I’d totally support this idea, but not to the extention that it may get destroyed by enemies simply because they tracked me down for visiting my cozy home so often. It’d be something like the Hotel from the game’s DLC where
spoiler

you defend the hotel at a certain point and it takes damage, but a bit more fleshed out than that

  1. Enemy strongholds or rather places where enemies have bunched up because maybe it’s known knowledge that a certain bunker has heavy weaponry and so creating risk/reward.
  2. Food and drink. Not to the complex extent, but rather have something to be mindful of.
  3. Health revamp, but a bit different. I’d rather have to take a bit less damage from enemies, having to consume less health, but also finding less medpacks. It gets in the way when I try to engage and have to constantly consume medpacks, then switch back to a weapon and waste enemy’s openings. It being tied to consuming food and drink for a small buff would be neat, though.

A lot of these ideas are big in scope, but they’re interesting. With time these could one by one be implemented, but I don’t think that everything from this list should be in the game.

I’d support some of these ideas with full force :smiley:

Interesting read. Though, there are several questions and remarks about it.

First off, your Survival part, including Final Notes are interesting but those change the game way too much. Also, as said by Graham, the community manager AND Paul, the product owner of Generation Zero, any additional/complex survival in GZ, does not happen. The Boss Man continues to explain why not.

You can listen all of it from one of the latest dev streams, at 00:45:43,
link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/523152516?filter=archives&sort=time

That takes care of Survival part, now about Tactical part.
How exactly are you planning to scale all that between SP and MP?

For example: 4. Siege.
That sounds like MP exclusive feature, where you describe having 4x high lvl players do make it doable. Any less, especially solo players are effectively cut out.

Same goes for the 3. Enemy Stronghold, which sounds like a Raid mechanic.
While Raids have been suggested before and devs do find it enjoyable for MP gameplay, devs also know that it’s a LOT of work and solo players will be left to the dark (can’t participate). And latter is something which devs will not implement (because it would create a divide between solo players and multiplayer). Though, there is a glimmer of hope in this (Raids), if devs can find a way to make it doable for both (solo and multi).

Latter was said by Björn, the lead designer of Generation Zero, in one of the dev streams, at 00:49:50,
link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/513977552?filter=archives&sort=time

There is one main mission in GZ which has a lot of emphasis on multiplayer and it’s best to be done in MP. Which that mission is - that i’m not going to spoil for you (since you’re new player). But that much i can say that this mission has had a LOT of backslash from community, especially from solo players since it’s very hard for solo players.
We need to wait and see if that mission remains one of a kind (a test from the devs part, to say so) or there are more like those to come in the future.

2.Safehouse Destruction
Currently, safehouses are static in game (which i do like). Your suggestion makes them dynamic. More fun for players? Perhaps. But what it mainly does is changing the game mechanic way too much, almost making a new game out of it. I don’t think devs would change the game so drastically. In GZ sequel game (which would be fun if it comes), sure, this feature can be in from the beginning but in the first iteration (and hopefully not the only iteration) of Generation Zero, that doesn’t fit.

1.The Flow of Power
That is already in the game in form of Rivals and how they are spawned in. Your idea seems to be expansion of current Rivals system. However, if the machine amount increases based on the heat level, it can produce issues. More machines around player = more computing power from CPU and GPU.
PC users are fine since they can upgrade their hardware to cope with it. It’s the console users (PS4 and Xbox) who are stuck with their hardware limitations. And since devs want to keep same game version on both platforms (PC and console), many times, it’s the consoles that limit what can be done or added to the game.

That concluded Tactical and now, about Technical.

3.Containers
Currently, we have 50 slot inventory on char (if Carry Capacity is lvl2) and 100 slot Plundra. Nice and simple. Here, i don’t see the need to make the inventory system more complex so you can log around more stuff, as it is in Escape from Tarkov or in DayZ. Sure, it adds realism but in GZ, Plundra is in each safehouse, where there’s no need to carry everything you own with you. Though, in the early days, there were no Plundra whatsoever and that was fun.

2.Crafting
Crafting was planned for the GZ and devs did vision that you collect (machine) parts from the world and use them to make weapon mods. How far that idea has been developed or if it ever realizes - that i don’t know. And due to that, i can’t comment about it either.

1.Safehouses
Freedom of choosing the loc of your safehouse does sound nice since there are plenty of nice/good spots where i’d like my safehouse to be. However, field radios respawn and one can make the whole map a big safehouse. On the other hand, giving a fixed amount of field radios to “create” safehouses can cause issues, where for some, there aren’t enough, while for others, there are excessive amounts of “safehouse makers”.
Also, how does it work in MP? Can a random bloke come to my game and drop the “safehouse maker” where-ever he/she wants, thus messing up my game?
Btw, machines doesn’t use visible light spectrum to see you, so, camo netting doesn’t protect anything. Camo netting only protects from human sight.

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Firstly, I have not finished the story so some of what I say may already be covered by bits I have not yet got too.

For the food and water, I would be more for regeneration over time with good food / water levels going to zero regen (as it is now) with low food / water levels but nothing below that.

For the safe houses I think I would suggest a half way compromise
 How about buildings you can make in to safe houses by securing / barricading them. You need to hunt down items to do this and only certain buildings have this option. This gives more to do end game, a reason for some more loot diversity, the player gets some choice on safe house locations and it does not go too far with turning it in to a base building game.

Build in the option for the bots to find / destroy the base and you have a chess type game with strategic safe houses being built and lost but not essential for the game to be what it is. Would seem like a simple gameplay loop although implementation would most likely require quite a bit of effort.

On the crafting side I would prefer the weapons to change state over time with the ability to repair and the risk of jamming depending on state. I would also like to see the experimentals also have a risk of ‘something unexpected’ happening so getting and using them is not without risk. They could just stop working or revert to the original type without a fix requiring a rare / difficult to get component (possibly from a particular bot class).

The degrading of weapons should take a fair amount of use. Degrading too quickly will be a big frustration for most but if tuned right it could be an interesting aspect to the game and give a reason for looting over just getting ammo and health.

Oh please no!

(20 characters)

Well at least it isn’t farming for tins of beans and something to open them with every 15 minutes (I am thinking of you DayZ) :laughing:.

Seriously, what is experimental about the experimental weapons. Experiments tend to do things you don’t always expect. Without that they should just be renamed ‘Uber’ or ‘Awesome’ surely ?.:exploding_head:

The British DPM pattern combat suits were Disriptive Pattern (i.e. Camo) in both visible and IR light. We weren’t allowed to wash them in a normal washing machine.