Please do not add all the features that are suggested

Dear Devs. Just a little thumbs up from me. I love the game is really an understatement, and I love it as is, because it is what you wanted to make. I therefore really hope that you let the game evolve according to your own balanced ideas for the game and how you envision its future. What I love especially is that it’s different from other games. The atmosphere, the 80s setting with its matching clothing, absolutely brilliant.

Of course I also constantly see the improvement suggestions that come in the form of hundreds of different opinions on how the game ‘should’ be. Many of those suggestions will probably ruin that specialness that the game has, and change it into stale uniformity, if applied.

Cheers
Gysbert

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Well, devs are sane and there’s no need to worry about game breaking suggestions coming to the game. :wink: Else-ways, we’d already have all those weird and crazy things in the game which have been suggested in the past 1.5 years.

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Game breaking is obvious not my worry :wink:, but experience breaking and atmosphere breaking. I certainly believe that the devs are sane, but we have seen that pressure to change the game, has led to the devs changing the game, before.

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Some of the features were planned from the beginning (e.g crafting) while others were changed during release (bounty missions -> rivals).

Out of all what has been suggested by players and which have made it to the game, are: bikes, Plundra, machine loot, LMGs, new inventory, Prone, ammo switch with 1 button and that’s about it. There are some minor QoL fixes/additions as well.

I like to think that certain features now added to the game would’ve been added anyway with or without suggestions. The devs are far more capable to know what feature would fit in how they want the game to feel.
And because the game isn’t finished story-wise I like to see what surprises the devs themselves come up with, and still preserving the same awesome atmosphere the game started with.

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I also looked at the wish list and what is wanted there.
Sometimes good things but also things that would ruin the atmosphere of the game.

We older players see the game differently than younger players. We don’t play quite as aggressively as younger players. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t really hit it when it’s appropriate.

Turning this game into a run and gun would really destroy it.
The exploration and finding out, the mixture of detective game and combat situations is what defines the game for me. It should be kept that way.
With the FNIX DLC the game got a more apocalypthic touch when walking through the destroyed Asö. or see the destroyed farms near the airfield.

In my opinion, there is no need for even bigger and more dangerous robots.

But more mysticism, a little more horror, it can be quiet, things like the cave on Hjimfall would be cool. A dark building that is not illuminated and where important things have to be retrieved.
Mystical places that have a special flair, where you can find special things and where you have to survive adventures on the way there.
Search for clues where you have to strain your head and can only follow clues that you have to find yourself. Without there being any signposts for this. You have to find out for yourself, more detective work.
New weapons don’t have to be either, although I’m a little old fashioned and that’s why I’d like a 1911 Colt or a Beretta, or a 50s Smith & Wesson.
Of course, the devs have to follow the mainstream because the game needs commercial success to keep it alive.

We’ll see where we’re headed, I’ll definitely be there, my guns are oiled and I have enough ammunition.

Hail gunslingers, Jericho Hill is waiting for you.

Fear not, they only put in game what has been asked by many.
EVEN if it is not really game compatible (story/balance wise).

It will go where it goes. :wink:

It will indeed go where it goes, but will that go to how you want the game to be, or will it go to how the devs want the game to be?

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The last, obviously.
And I can only hope, if they implement vehicles, it is totally optional.
But no more than: I can only hope for that.

How about a sled? There is one already in the game (interactive I mean).

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In the early days, there was no bicycle or so.
We HAD to walk, and I loved it.
Since exploration is part of the games intend.

Adding transport killed that part.
“It takes to long to run to the next city.”
Well… they miss out on a lot, biking around.
Same for a sled.

I always opposed any form of transportation, but they installed it either way.
Well… all I can do is trying to ignore it.
Not easy, as it is everywhere!!!

Sic vita est…
It is what it is.

You do know that the bikes were requested, just like all the requests and suggestions you make? But now you hate that what was requested, and possibly, probably, some people will hate other suggestions and requests if they make the game. Complaints will never end. :innocent:

I do not mind the bikes, nor have I problems seeing them. I think it is strange that you are annoyed by them just being there. Annoyance or not, they do fit perfectly in a post-apocalyptic 80s world where fuel is probably problematic and dangerously explosive. Great is that you can easily ignore bikes because running is really much easier and therefore faster, because I run and jump fences, walls, and go cross country and mountains. The routes, not so easy on a bike. I therefore don’t believe many people use them outside of the two missions.

Don’t think I am against suggestions, for all, I want everybody to have freedom of speech. So not against, but I feel suggestions will hinder the creativity and originality of the devs for future expansions. Once in awhile I write one-page-stories for fun really, and I do not like it if I wrote something and I see that same idea been used already. Suggestions would be deadly for me. Of course you always draw inspiration from what you know, seen and experienced yourself. It is never truly original, but the where, the who, and how can be. For games other things can be important. So the inventory system is not awkward but a feature that make you think before you solve a problem. And that feature is one of the many things that make the game awesome and more real.

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I never requested this.
Nor Plundra.
But it there, so…

The point is somebody requested bikes, and now there are people who hate it. Would the devs put bikes in if they weren’t requested?

Ugh.
Some opposed to this, as well, and with valid reason.
Still, it is there.

Point is: none of us decides where the game will go.
We can make suggestions, bring on ideas… but there it just stops for us.

It simply is what it is, sir.

I think I already see the pressure working and influencing on how the game is being put out. FNIX felt like it was pressured by the fact that an ‘Oddity’ post gained huge traction and to get the ball rolling for this discovery, they might’ve done that. Only seemingly.

By popular request we got NPCs… Even if I see them as ‘viable’ there was no rush for that to be added so soon and also seeming really… barebone. The story related to NPCs was good, but not the NPCs themselves.
By popular request we got Melee weapons and now you can see people smack silly runners and hunters, even tanks.

Suggestions are good and all to put an idea out there, but when an idea is not fully though-through and gains attention, everyone going around only >Demanding< a generalized idea, you get what you ask for and chip away from what the game used to be.

It’s personal for each, so personally I don’t like it so much and the majority(popular request) people would most likely disagree with me, as it makes the game fun for them. I just don’t like it being wacky fun, rather this gritty fun. I just sticked around playing and simulating that feel of gritty fun, because I still can somewhat force myself to not do certain things. The game had this more unique feel to how gunplay went, but it’s now feeling more of a shoot-shoot game that there’s so many of already.

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I heartily agree. Pursuing the “wishlist” hasn’t done much to increase my engagement with GZ. Personally, I preferred the game without the Plundra (or maybe with the initial Plundra before they increased the storage) ; no matter how much storage you have you always fill it, it was easier to not have to deal with it and just manage your inventory.

I also preferred it without the NPCs tbh. Their introduction just highlights weaknesses within the engine / team budgets for dealing with lifelike characters, lip-synching etc. Over the radio I can imagine people, but staring at lifeless mannequins who don’t react to anything just makes the game feel aged in a way that it didn’t previously.

Plus, I preferred the mystery of the early iterations of the game. Everything was abandoned with no sign of life. It very much felt like Simon Stalenhag’s Sweden as depicted in his book / RPG “Tales From the Loop”. Now there are corpses, gore and wreckage everywhere.

The latest round of changes all but turn the farmlands into Resistance Fall of Man, or knock-off Half-Life 2 with the pointless alien looking FNIX structures everywhere.

Personally I feel the game is losing its unique identity, and becoming more “homogenous” with less and less to distinguish it from everything else with each passing iteration.

It’s rare I stick with a game for well over a year as I have done with GZ the community is excellent, but the wait for the Xbox patch was too long for me; I (and the Swedes I play with) started to move on to other titles, multiplayer (and Gnome-hunting) was what kept our interest.

But the state of the Xbox version post FNIX Rising has made multiplayer more frustrating and less reliable. It’s all but killed our interest. I really hope I don’t hit the savegame bug, at that point I think I’d just uninstall.

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Quite honestly, there have been long wishlists where people have asked for everything from giant robots to melee weapons, motorcycles, cars, bicycles, gigantic machine guns, hundreds of enemies to shoot down in every fight and, and, and.

In retrospect, how much of it has been achieved. The melee weapons, the bicycles, the switch with which the game can be set to different degrees of hardness. So far so good.

Of course, I would always use a baseball bat instead of a gun against a 4m tall robot equipped with at least one cal 50 cannon :crazy_face:

A sledgehammer makes sense if you have nothing better and a runner can at least be broken with it.

That you can lie on your stomach is really useful in some situations

But do I really need a bike?

Do I have to shoot twenty hunters and fifty runners every time I stick my nose out the door of my safe house so that I can finally go on with the next mission?

I think that destroys the whole atmosphere of the game. There are already enough run and gun games that all seem pretty uniform and crazy.

The surreal, deserted atmosphere that you could escape and hide made the game so unique that you were confronted with things over and over again, that you followed the trail of any survivors and found them on Hjimfall.
Of course, such wish lists are good for brainstorming purposes to generate new impulses and ideas. It is also a means of doing market research so that the game remains interesting for the general public.

For a studio like Systemic Reaction it is of course a fine line to walk between what the devs themselves want and what the community wants. As I said before, don’t lose sight of the game’s commercial success because that’s what ultimately keeps the game alive

On the other hand, doing what the community wants can also kill a game. I like to believe that when you have a good idea, you should stick to it, and do not change the developing path to favour the community. Only put in what fits. Going prone is a perfectly legitimate game mechanic that fits within the stealthy gameplay that is needed in this game. I use this all the time, together with my clothing crafted to maximum camouflage (maximum which my current schematics allow), works like a charm for the way I play.

So some of the features added to the game have a positive effect to the game, while other additions may take away from it. I loved the many things about the Swedish culture you can find. Everytime I found new objects of locations it brought a smile on my face. I’m still looking, can’t believe I found it all yet.

I agree full with you. And it was that what has make the game so interresting.

To find out of swedens culture. It is the atmosphere i love so much. Walking at the shoreline see the sunlight, walking through a wood and find a abandoned house or a ruin of a castle. That silent creeping up to an enemy, going prone, observe them and at the right moment snipe them that brings more tensing situations as fighting bunch of enemys.