Regarding inaccessible houses in map revamps

[Aesyle]

Hi

With new map revamps, starting from Archipelago region with March '20 update, the game world is changing to showcase the passage of time. This is neat and all but one part of the change, namely buildings, from the old, open and abandoned state, to new destroyed or boarded up state, lessens the quality of life for many players.

Open houses give players a place to hide from the machines and also provide good cover. Destroying and boarding up the houses results only in a state where there’s less cover and players are forced to fight machines out in the open.
Thing is, not everyone want nor are capable of fighting machines out in the open.

Few examples:
Stillsjön (Forest)

Lerberget (Forest)

Äso (Farmlands)

While open houses is just one method to play GZ, but is it really wise to remove that option from players? In favor of what? More loot containers around destroyed/boarded up houses? It’s not like loot containers are scarce in GZ, so that we need more of it.

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Here, i suggest to devs, that in the upcoming map revamps (and perhaps even in the current revamps), more houses are left open.

At current rate, far more houses are either destroyed or boarded up than left open. I don’t know the exact ratio but what i’ve seen so far, is that within the settlement/POI, if you are able to find 1-2 open houses, you’re in luck.

For a good balance, out of the 3 house states:

• destroyed (razed to the ground)
• boarded up
• left open (enterable)

It would be nice if the ratio would be 1:3 within the settlement/POI.

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There is a great example of this 1:3 ratio in the game: Avernholm Manor (Farmlands).

Before revamp; all 3 houses were enterable:

After revamp, (from right to left) one was destroyed, another was boarded up and last one remained open:

–
Aesyle

[Bootie]

I have just realised that the update has destroyed my favourite battle in the entire game. The two military tanks that spawn beside the windmills could be fought from the farmhouse just down the bank. If you did not complete the mission underneath the windmill, they would respawn constantly.

If you could attract the attention of a seeker before you went into the farmhouse, you’d be attacked by ten or twelve hunters, two to four tanks, a harvester or two and fifteen runners. Tearing round the house, upstairs and down, from window to window to balcony to back door, to hiding on the landing, there was forty minutes of fab mayhem, and you could survive it.

Now they have put up a tent behind the house and shut most of the house. No back door, no upstairs, added two rooms behind with closed curtains so you can’t fight from them. My favourite battle is gone, for no good reason of any description.

I could literally weep.

How is it that we can stop them from shutting all the houses for no good reason? How can we stop them?

[Aesyle]

@Bootie

I have just realised that the update has destroyed my favourite battle in the entire game.

Welcome to the club.

Once the Archipelago region revamps begun, back in March '20, i could tell that devs are destroying/locking up houses and it will get worse for any player who likes to use houses as a cover.

And now, with every region revamp, the ease of life is getting worse. If you’re lucky, you can find one house that has full access but the luxury of choosing which house to battle from (since not all houses are equal), is gone. That is, IF you find any house, at all, that you can take cover in.

[Bootie]

I don’t understand why they’re doing it. I simply don’t understand the thinking. Do you suppose they have been taken over by the machines? The machines are the only ones who benefit - it must be them.

[busterdeesbro]

Yep. I had to smile when a popular You Tuber praised the team for the continuity. The last update had a business and very permanent-looking tower appear in Boo. One house was flipped around completely and Littorp is a mess. How, in the middle of a machine invasion, do you build an addition to a house. I wonder if it doesn’t all have to do with balancing program resources. Maybe all the extra stuff means most houses have to be inaccessible. The last update did some funny things to Fiskeback. I appreciate being able to get into the businesses but the destroyed part of town has created serous rendering issues where, if you stand on a mound of rubble and look around, buildings appear and disappear. I was so sad to see what they did to Ostervik. I mean, when they’re done, will there still be anyplace to put a Semla? Chomp, chomp, gulp goes the game.

[Zesiir]

The game world is constantly evolving. The devs clearly have a vision for the game that they do their best to follow, while listening to the feedback of the community. There are those that want to see the game the way it was, and those who are happy with how it’s coming along.

It can be hard to find balance.

[Aesyle]

@Zesiir

It can be hard to find balance.

There is no balance.

Old map style had everything abandoned, left open, as they should. Since when the e-vac alarm sounded, no-one had time to even collect personal belongings, let alone board up their houses.

Current map style is everything either destroyed or boarded up.

On lore standpoint, one could argue that Resistance members are the ones boarding up houses, to showcase the time passing. But against whom they are doing that? Machines don’t care about houses. It’s the people they are after. All that boarding up does, is making life harder for other survivors since with every boarded up house, there is less and less cover available, to hide from the machines.

@busterdeesbro

Maybe all the extra stuff means most houses have to be inaccessible.

In highly populated areas (e.g Östervik), perhaps. But for sure not in rural areas, where there’s lots of empty space between houses.

When you boot up the game, any proper game, all assets aren’t loaded at once and kept in the RAM for fast access. Instead, the assets close to player are loaded. Hence the view distance limit and especially machine render-in distance at 400m around the player.

If all assets would be loaded and rendered at all times, there wouldn’t be any loading times in the game what-so-ever and no view distance limitations as well. But when you fast travel to anywhere, there is still loading time. Worst is when you fast travel to Östervik’s Church since that results in the longest loading time in the game, to load in and render all the assets in Östervik.

[knobitobi]

@Zesiir

It can be hard to find balance.

There was a balance when the game launched and maybe the lighter changes in the Archipelago region. But since then the world has got a fallouty look to it. I don’t like this at all. I didn’t like this half a year ago (Dear Devs: please stop destroying everything) and it didn’t change. There is no accustoming. I would probably not bought the game with the look the game has nowadays. And I really wished for a toggle to have the initial, unique look and feel of the game back.

I know this is complaining on a high level since I got a lot of playtime for my money but I didn’t ask for this and I didn’t bought the game to have access to a pseudo live service. I would be happy if the world stayed as it was and the devs just made additions around it.

Oh well, it is what it is (although I don’t like it). I vent my frustration on the machines

[Bootie]

Now you see, Xezr, I’m not sure the devs have a clear vision for the game. Each area is done by someone different (that was in a stream - no doubt Aesyle will know which and where), and I’m not convinced that there is an overview. They seem to be oiling the squeakiest hinge all the time. Bosses, Super-Bosses, crafting, base-building and hordes have all gone in, but not one of those things fits the original concept.

Now, the houses thing seems to be to create a concept picture, rather than a live-in space, and then the action is to tear around a Tank and five Hunters in a field screaming.

But that’s not the game they set out to make. Nor is it the game I wanted to buy. And anyway, they already have a game like that with dinosaurs in it.

[Zesiir]

I suppose I should specify; I don’t mind the houses that are actually barricaded inside. That makes sense. If you can’t make it to the top floor because someone put furniture in the way, sure.

But the ones that are just boarded up with a plank of wood or have a box placed in the way of the door so it’s inaccessible, that’s a bit strange.

Though I think we might need a separate thread about just the houses now.

The game was going to move away from the spooky, abandoned setting at some point.
But, let’s focus on the now. What I would like to see would be more options for basebuilding in other areas. I don’t know if it’s possible but inside the city would actually be cool.

[OBiW4NSHiNOBi]

@Bootie

Now you see, Xezr, I’m not sure the devs have a clear vision for the game. Each area is done by someone different (that was in a stream - no doubt Aesyle will know which and where), and I’m not convinced that there is an overview. They seem to be oiling the squeakiest hinge all the time. Bosses, Super-Bosses, crafting, base-building and hordes have all gone in, but not one of those things fits the original concept.

This.

100 x this.

The original game had a perfectly balanced world design and a mystery to investigate. The premise was that you’d returned to an empty country, deserted houses and robots everywhere. What happened?

Just walk for 5 minutes in the new world and you’ll find craters, blood, corpses & barricades etc. Look a bit harder and there are Russian troops and resistance camps.

You’ve got to wonder exactly how long the player had been gone for and how far away? Have they woken up from a coma!? because there’s no way this ‘just happened’.

The world as it is no longer fits the original narrative or game design. Tbh. I’d wager none of this was ever part of the ‘original vision’ and is a result of devs throwing ideas at a wall to see what sticks.

This game has had more retcons & continuity changes than Star Wars at this point.

[Ixhaton]

Sorry to say, but I personlly think Aesyle is right here… His point makes a lot of sense.

@Aesyle

There is no balance.

Old map style had everything abandoned, left open, as they should. Since when the e-vac alarm sounded, no-one had time to even collect personal belongings, let alone board up their houses.

Current map style is everything either destroyed or boarded up.

On lore standpoint, one could argue that Resistance members are the ones boarding up houses, to showcase the time passing. But against whom they are doing that? Machines don’t care about houses. It’s the people they are after. All that boarding up does, is making life harder for other survivors since with every boarded up house, there is less and less cover available, to hide from the machines.

Putting a resistance “base” in one place just begs for a concentrated attack.
The whole point of putting up a proper “resistance” is to have it scattered, to wage a Guerilla type of warfare on an enemy like Fnix and the whole machine invasion.

Boarding up and burning down everything left, right and center just feels completely contradictive.

If anything; More and more houses that are boarded up, should be opened up instead.
More places to hide and fight from. More places to find loot or to hide stashes of loot.

Boarding up simply does not make any sense.
Unless we get to have a tool like a crowbar and unlock all these places again.

As someone said before; A wheelbarrow or a small plank in front of a door, would that stop anyone in real life? Not me.

And on a sidenote, it does not make sense again, if you think our characters can haul about 100Kg of schtuff looted from everywhere around, but can not swim?
So they are also too weak to move a wheelbarrow or pry open a door held close with a thin wooden plank?

I just hope this trend will end here.
GZ at this point in time is not the game I originally bought anymore, nor want it to be or to evolve further from it’s origin.
New stuff is good, but not this. Not Basebuilding and a ravaged boarded up burned down gameworld.

Burned down or (heavily) damaged, I can agree upon… But the boarding up. No.

[Aesyle]

Discussion moved to proper topic.

//Mod

[Zesiir]

Hey guys, I brought the question about the closed houses to the developer design team & showed them your feedback. Below is basically what they told me, so I can post for all to see.

There are basically two main reasons why the houses were boarded up;

Performance - This is the big one and having a lot of propped houses does affect the performance. Especially with XB1 and PS4 they need to be mindful of how performance-heavy the game is, so it still runs okay on the base versions of the consoles as not everyone has access to a high end gaming PC or Pro versions of the consoles.

World Design + Narrative - One of the bigger feedback points they got after launch was that the world would sometimes feel empty and that many locations were samey/similar. Therefore they wanted to maximize the amount of custom propped houses to add some more life, narrative and variation to locations.

Depending on the narrative for some locations, they would often board up some of the houses to allow more focus to be put on the custom propped/narrative houses and they usually are a bit more visually interesting with some lamps and light sources to attract players, while the boarded up ones are still serving as objects you can hide behind when in combat, and narratively showing that people in the world have packed their bags and left their homes.

As they are a small team with limited resources, they gradually add to the world (new world scenes, region revamps, propping, etc) when able, in a scope to try and keep what’s realistic and achievable for a team of their size, while at the same time balancing between that and performance.

Finally, I’ve been told that they do very much acknowledge and value the feedback given here and will take it into account moving forward.

I hope that’ll do for an answer on the subject

[Lonewolf]

@Bootie

I don’t understand why they’re doing it.

Answer is pretty simple. In game development, and graphics wise how the game is able to run on different systems.
Game area has to obey certain polygon budget. Mostly i would bet this is because of console machines. They have limited processing capability.
PC side it can wary greatly.

So boarding up or making houses destroyed, they free up this polygon budget. To add other details to surrounding areas.

[Aesyle]

@Lonewolf

So boarding up or making houses destroyed, they free up this polygon budget.

Well, rendering the animation of live smoke or fire in destroyed houses is far more taxing to CPU/GPU than loading in still images (e.g house furniture).

Here, i’m unsure if destroyed house with all the live smoke and fire is really less taxing to the system than open house with furniture in it (no constant animations).

[DeadWanderer]

So I get that devs made a “basic shape” of the world at launch and by “gradually add to the world” they actually finishing the product, but story and time(line) ain’t staying still and world is constanly changes, which creates the flusterclank that is “compromise between intented world and current story world”.

I agree with Aesyle that animations on props (burning and sparking) are more taxing than just re-propped houses. Like, I even get better FPS with IR mode, than Normal mode with all that rendering.
IMO I’d like to see more destruction by “hit damage” (chunks ripped off by machine gun or holes and concaves by explosive forces), than still burning houses.

I do understand where game go. I just don’t like where it goes and devs, IMO again, going overboard with this much destruction (keywords much destruction).
If it were to happen - I’d wholly agree to retcon some revamps if it benefits both performance and story.

[Gysbert]

I was suspecting that, keeping performance in check, was the reason.

[broken_insect289]

I hear everyone here and I get maybe the game isn’t as pretty on the whole map as it once was, however if the story is evolving and moving forward it cannot stay the same as the initial launch. I suspected performance for base consoles was the issue with empty areas and boarded up housing, I do want to see the story progress and hopefully more exciting additions coming, the world was always going to be scared from the growing conflict and growing combatants, right now it doesn’t feel ruined for me just showing the signs of conflict on a whole, just my opinion and base building is something new to mess around with, let’s just see what the year brings!
Happy hunting all

[Kimosabe_X]

@Zesiir

Performance - This is the big one and having a lot of propped houses does affect the performance. Especially with XB1 and PS4 they need to be mindful of how performance-heavy the game is, so it still runs okay on the base versions of the consoles as not everyone has access to a high end gaming PC or Pro versions of the consoles.

Hmhm… I thought about that more an more often, especially when you turn around in some spots/locations and see the “world” graphics change and vanish in front of your eyes…

I didn’t want to be the first one to speak this out but for me it’s time to split the worlds of consoles and PC, no ?
Because sometimes it is embarassing to see these artificial graphic limitations due to console versions capable of running on the lowest thinkable specs.
People from different platforms are not able to play together anyway so why tie the game to the lowest specs for all ?
I guess most of the PC players do have a decent set of hardware in their machines where CPUs or graphics cards sometimes cost more than a console… + TV set…

I really don’t want to offend any group of players on the different platforms but is it really so hard to set different graphics settings and values for the different platforms ?

My 2 ct