Regarding inaccessible houses in map revamps

No worries, you’re not the 1st one. :grinning: I talked about it way back in July '20:

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*phew * Good to hear that… :wink:

The simple answer to that woul be “go and get a decent PC or stop complaining”… :zipper_mouth_face: :face_with_hand_over_mouth: :wink:

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I don’t know as I now play on PS5, and the game is so much better in every way than when I used to play on PS4, I don’t know I guess time will tell but I suppose that the numbers for base consoles players are very high on this game still !

Well, that would be something one buddy can tell another one :smile: , but for a company to tell that for their customers would mean end of the company due to the revenue loss.


I know the reason why PC and console versions have been kept same. Though, i also think that devs have discussed about splitting the two and develop two builds; one for PC and another for console. As of why the split hasn’t been done - that i can’t tell.

Following is me speculating;

What would be the pros and cons if devs would split the game? :thinking:

Pros:

  • Game is fine tuned to the platform, increasing the overall stability and lessening load on the hardware.
    E.g PC players would get 800m render distance while console players would get 200m render distance.
  • More full of a game.
    E.g there would be more fancy animations and many houses wouldn’t be boarded up, since PC version wouldn’t be limited by the console hardware cap. Same would be on consoles, since when consoles wouldn’t need to live up for the PC performance and can have lesser render distance (to reduce overall hardware load), more fancier world can be included for the console version as well.
  • Fine tuned controls for each platform.
    Here, devs could add more functions for separate keys of PCs and for consoles, optimize the controls for controllers.

Cons:

  • Different time when updates are released.
    Usually, it’s far easier to make and publish the PC update than console update. Since for the latter, there is cap at the hardware limitations and it takes time to optimize the game for older hardware (consoles).
  • Different states of the game between PC and console.
    Result when updates are released at different times. (Which is already partially in effect.)
  • Splitting up the already small dev team, resulting in PC department and console department.
    Unless that is already in effect.

And… can’t think any more right now.

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I dread to think what will be left after the next revamp. Has the game really reached the point where any enhancement means fewer accessible buildings. I guess new map areas are also unlikely for similar reasons.

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But a ruined house is more complicated than a simple one. Anyway, Himfjall had both, and opened up the stores. I’d rather have the houses to fight from than lots of set-piece scenes with unnecessary soldiers and tanks.

All my Semla is disappearing - empty plates is what I see in every kitchen. Some miserable bugger is running around ahead of me and eating all the Semla. I’d rather have the buildings than the detail, which is irrelevant. Once you’ve seen the battle scene, well, you’ve seen it. But a house is a joy to fight from forever…

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So somehow I don’t know what to do with the story. When I got into the story at the end of 2019, it was still mysterious and sometimes creepy. You could take refuge in houses, which made sense from the history, because the residents fled headlong. The fact that some houses and places like Asö were completely destroyed during the last update was not so great, but OK. Somehow fit into the story. But now, we are one year further in history, the resistance has increased. The survivors have gathered. OK. but no longer fits with the beginning. As a reminder, you come from a boat trip, land in Yttervik and everyone is gone. But you don’t travel a year to get from Yttervik to the forest region or to the farmland. Somehow inconclusive. Maybe it should have been better to create a Generation Zero Part 2. To give a better ending to the story from a year ago. Then you would still have the possibility to switch back and forth between the two worlds. The base building is quite nice, but for me the game lives from wandering around. But if you only hike through completely destroyed landscapes, it is no longer fun. Somehow the devs should find their way back to their story and not implement what is screamed the loudest. If you continue like this, I believe that this is going in the completely wrong direction

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Been some time since I chimed in to this - my suggestion as to how to handle the discrepancies: Make the ‘newer’ story part of a DLC, and trigger the world changes after the player has finished the Alpine Unrest DLC. The new players start the original story, roam the empty landscape, fight their way through to the ‘boss fight’, get a few months of offscreen rest, then the landscape and missions change to fit the new direction.

I personally still miss the May 2020 feel from back when I bought the game - free-roaming gameplay, tough-as-nails robots teetering on the brink of god-mode cheating. Unfortunately, while some issues have been addressed and the story and world-building have expanded considerably, bugs out of the bottom of hell till haven’t been fixed - flickering due to seams in the models, landscape ‘holes’, misplaced props, car models, houses, teleporting bots. I’m holding out for some QOL improvements in these areas, but the fix for most of these problems seems to have been to get rid of the structures entirely…

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That is in my opinion a really good idea. They stay a time on Hjimfäll. Maybe to rest for the Winter. Fight the Isle free and then move back to Östertörn where Fnix has destroyed more Landsapes and builts his network. That is a thing that makes sense.

Not a bad idea honestly, while I think it would take up more space on a harddrive, having the world change based on triggers ie based on completet content would make the “evolving” world feel more natural. The mystery aspect isn’t there for new players because in a way, finding the world a battlefield and signs of fighting spoils the story when starting out. Or at least takes away from momnent when you do understand it. These revamps only really work for players who have been with the game for a long time, for us the revamps make sense because time has moved for us as in the game.

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This is bang on the money. My own theory is that the guys who evolved the first incarnation have all moved on and left it to people who didn’t really agree with it. The ones who are left are only hearing the screamers, so are giving them everything they ask for, without caring about the story.

The problem is that they are never going to stop screaming for more. New weapons, new enemies, new crafting, new bases, stick all the missions on the HUD, blah, blah, blah. All the rest of us (and it’s the majority on this forum) are going to be ignored.

Everything they “redo” is a wasteland. Great for running around tanks screaming, but hopeless for the ones who hate dying.

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I think you are all missing an even more import aspect with regard to the houses in the game.

While exploring, I have encountered several homes without bathrooms!

Literally unplayable.

(Hopefully my sarcasm translates)

Not quite.

Vanilla missions - 10th of November '89
Alpine Unrest - 10th of December '89
FNIX Rising - between 26th and 29th of December '89
Resistance - mid-late March '90

source: Generation Zero story timeline

So, time has advanced only 4 months in-game. :slight_smile:

My best guess of this mixture of lore, is because devs are seeing GZ as a “live service”, where time in game advances with every lore update.
And since the dev team is small, they can’t push the time advancement to entirety of the map at once. At best, they can do it one region at a time.

With this, we have a time paradox in the game :thinking:, where:
Mountains, Marshlands and North Coast are at: 10th of November '89 (d-day)
Himfjäll is at: 10th of December '89
Archipelago, Farmlands and South Coast are at: between 26th and 29th of December '89
Forest is at: mid-late March '90


I have no clue how to fix lore timeline since it’s a proper mess, even for old timers, and nearly incomprehensible for new players. :disappointed:

While neat idea, to correct the game timeline for anyone new playing GZ, sadly, that can’t be done legally. Since that will lock FNIX Rising DLC after Alpine Unrest DLC and from it, comes the issue.

Current lore goes as follows: vanilla game → Alpine Unrest DLC → FNIX Rising DLC → Resistance update.

I don’t know the legal side of it that well but idea is; that when you buy the DLC within game (e.g FNIX Rising), you need to access the bought content as soon as you bought it. Not 1, 10 or 100 gameplay hours later, where the content is locked behind prerequisite event in the game.

E.g:
Someone is buying GZ since they saw base building in it. Once in the game, they learn that for them to build their base, they have to follow the lore. Which means:

  1. finish vanilla main missions
  2. buy Alpine Unrest DLC
  3. finish Himfjäll main missions
  4. buy FNIX Rising DLC
  5. finish FNIX Rising main missions
  6. finish Resistance side mission (unavoidable)
    and only then, they can start building their base.

I’d estimate that taking roughly 200 gameplay hours, just to get access to base building. :face_with_monocle:

That has been pointed out in the forums before and there is no need to have a dedicated bathroom in the house when you have outhouse + sauna. Both are common in Nordic countries.
(But i did get your sarcasm. :wink: )

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First of all, don’t insult those who want other things than you by calling them names. That’s not being nice, and I’m going to have to advise you to stop doing that.

Secondly, please do not assume things on behalf of everybody else.
Play nice, and be constructive if you’re going to post feedback. That goes for everybody.

//Mod

Thanks for the explanation. I’m not sure regarding the ‘legality’ of things - I got various games where DLC is locked behind a playthrough or a mission you need to finish, but IANAL.

I think the bigger problem is the separation/splitting of the player base, as the structural changes to the map would require the same story progress for all participants. Can’t storm the robot castle if it’s not there for the base game players. :upside_down_face:

As I said back with the June 2020 update - maybe offer a Steam ‘beta’ branch of various game states to those that want to relive the older versions?

Not all consoles are limited or old, just my two pence worth !

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Yes, not all are, e.g: PS5 or Xbox Series X/S. But when a game is made according to the specs of PS4 and Xbox One, it doesn’t matter if there are better consoles out there. Game will be still limited to what that old, discontinued hardware, from 2013, is capable of.

That’s why i suggested the split in the game version. So that the old consoles get better optimization, without having to live up to the performance of current day hardware. And in turn, the current day hardware wouldn’t be limited on what the obsolete hardware is capable of.

I would be happy with specific optimisation for pc, old and new console, maybe it will happen I just don’t know ! :+1:

If that were a book that I had to edit, I would write a big comment to the writer at this point, because that’s a big no-go in a book. But I think the devs will have thought something. Perhaps it should have been solved differently at this point, e.g. that this change is only triggered after the Hjimfall and Fnix DLC’s have been completed.

After I found some messages in a bottle and walked around a bit, I have to say again that what was done has been done with great attention to detail. Compliments to the devs. I also find the idea with the base building quite successful if you’ve experimented with it a little.

What I still regret a little is that so many houses have been destroyed that where previously intact. I don’t know if the devs have a plot for their story, but I hope so.

So we will see what is to come in the next updates or DLC’s. Because if I have understood the teaser correctly, we will take the Östertörn back and free it from the machines. I’m curious