Do not play State of Decay (zombie survival game)

[Grumman]

Just a quick PSA for anyone who enjoys community building games like Dwarf Fortress and third person sandbox games like GTA, and thought a combination of the two would be fun: it's not.

The developers of this game are the sort of assholes who think they have exclusive ownership of your life. You see, despite being a single player game and not one of those "social" games which at least have the excuse of running on a shared, persistent server, State of Decay punishes you for not playing the game. I spent yesterday's session carefully protecting two houses full of neighbouring survivors, even going to the trouble of setting up outposts protecting their houses instead of just mine, and what do I discover when I start playing today? They're all dead. I had been operating under the assumption that events already underway when you saved and quit would use real time timers, which was bad enough, but it will also just declare by fiat that your allies all died while you were asleep.

And you can't roll back to an earlier save where you didn't get jerked around like this. Even if you bypass the developers' attempt to stop you save scumming, the game will just kill everyone off again when you load your backup.

TL;DR: Undead Labs are stupid people who make obnoxious design decisions, and deserve to go out of business.

[Dominus Atheos]

I've never played the game or even barely heard of it, but everything you described is right on the wikipedia page.

Another feature of the game is dynamic progression; the game world continues acting whether or not the game is being played. If the game is not being played, friendly survivors within the home can still use and gather supplies, explore, and possibly be injured. Some characters may take weapons and ammo from the supply cache and may level up their abilities. New survivor enclaves can appear or disappear, cars the players' survivors own can be repaired, and weapons can be repaired. Non-plot-essential NPCs can become injured or fatigued with the player absent, but cannot die nor abandon the base.[

Seriously that stuff is a selling point.

[Grumman]

I stand by my criticism. The game has a mission type that exists solely to stop an enclave disappearing. Having the game ignore your success and just kill off the enclave anyway is not a selling point.

[Vendetta]

It's obviously included to try and make the world feel dynamic, but if it's too easily visible that the outcomes are just randomised by having it happen too close to the player then it stops doing its job at building immersion and starts breaking it instead.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

How does this happen? It sounds like saving and quitting in the middle of a Men of War mission, then finding out the game kept playing in the background and you lost.

1) Is it so?
2) Aren't the developers afraid that rednecks with huge gun racks will play their game?

[Vendetta]

It sounds like certain elements of the world are randomised on startup rather than being persistent, but the game is about persistent stuff building so it's jarring when the randomised elements clash with that.

[Darmalus]

It sounds like certain elements of the world are randomised on startup rather than being persistent, but the game is about persistent stuff building so it's jarring when the randomised elements clash with that.

If that's the case, isn't the best strategy to be to reload a saved game until you get an idea set of random elements?

[Vendetta]

Although I'm now hearing that it's not randomised, it's just that your outposts can fail to protect enclaves.

Is there feedback on that?

[Grumman]

It sounds like certain elements of the world are randomised on startup rather than being persistent, but the game is about persistent stuff building so it's jarring when the randomised elements clash with that.

If that's the case, isn't the best strategy to be to reload a saved game until you get an idea set of random elements?

I tried that a few times, but every time, all the enclaves were dead. Even if I could eventually get a result where not just one but both enclaves survived my downtime, I shouldn't have to, not just for turning off the game for the night.

Although I'm now hearing that it's not randomised, it's just that your outposts can fail to protect enclaves.

Is there feedback on that?

Outposts have booby traps that destroy any horde that walks within range, then have a short cooldown. They're not really intended to protect enclaves - you only get 4-8 of them - it just so happened that the enclaves spawned close enough to home that I was able to protect them too.

How the game is supposed to work is that if an enclave gets into trouble, they call their neighbours on the radio and then you can go try to help resolve the problem - fight off a siege, look for a missing survivor or whatever. Having these missions fail while the player is not playing isn't just unfun, it undermines the simulation. Working in shifts is an explicit game mechanic, so there shouldn't be any downtime when there isn't anyone available to answer the radio or anyone available to respond. Having missions fail because I, the player, don't have an assistant to play the game even though the player characters have assistants to go resolve problems while they're asleep is a failure on the developers' part.

[bilateralrope]

I've never played the game or even barely heard of it, but everything you described is right on the wikipedia page.

Another feature of the game is dynamic progression; the game world continues acting whether or not the game is being played. If the game is not being played, friendly survivors within the home can still use and gather supplies, explore, and possibly be injured. Some characters may take weapons and ammo from the supply cache and may level up their abilities. New survivor enclaves can appear or disappear, cars the players' survivors own can be repaired, and weapons can be repaired. Non-plot-essential NPCs can become injured or fatigued with the player absent, but cannot die nor abandon the base.[

Seriously that stuff is a selling point.

Was that added before or after players were surprised about it through playing ?

How is something listed on wikipedia, but not the Steam store page, a selling point ?

Checking the most helpful reviews on the Steam page, the only one that mentions this is a negative review. The people praising it doesn't mention it. Setting the filter to only positive reviews and none of the reviews in the first two pages mentioned it.

Did the developers mention this feature anywhere before release ?

[Flagg]

I've never played the game or even barely heard of it, but everything you described is right on the wikipedia page.

Another feature of the game is dynamic progression; the game world continues acting whether or not the game is being played. If the game is not being played, friendly survivors within the home can still use and gather supplies, explore, and possibly be injured. Some characters may take weapons and ammo from the supply cache and may level up their abilities. New survivor enclaves can appear or disappear, cars the players' survivors own can be repaired, and weapons can be repaired. Non-plot-essential NPCs can become injured or fatigued with the player absent, but cannot die nor abandon the base.[

Seriously that stuff is a selling point.

Was that added before or after players were surprised about it through playing ?

How is something listed on wikipedia, but not the Steam store page, a selling point ?

Checking the most helpful reviews on the Steam page, the only one that mentions this is a negative review. The people praising it doesn't mention it. Setting the filter to only positive reviews and none of the reviews in the first two pages mentioned it.

Did the developers mention this feature anywhere before release ?

I knew about it after I got it on XBLA and started reading the official game forums. It's a very community oriented dev team. The main thing to know about the game and the most important is that it's more of a proof of concept turned game in order to raise funds for an MMO called Class 4 (SOD was originally going to be called Class 3).

[Steel]

I was thinking about getting this game and a bit of digging revealed this feature. I did find a mod that allows you to customise it (or disable it entirely). I can't remember the name for the minute. I'll have a dig later.

[Meest]

I was thinking about getting this game and a bit of digging revealed this feature. I did find a mod that allows you to customise it (or disable it entirely). I can't remember the name for the minute. I'll have a dig later.

Romero mod? About the original post, why are you so concerned with enclaves? Rarely had to shop at enclaves, once you get into the bigger bases you become self sufficient with the odd ammo/material run, everything else can be generated at base.

[Steel]

Not Romero mod, no. I finally found it again:

http://www.zombiestandardtime.com/

This allows you to make the game not do anything when you're logged out, or limit the amount of time that can pass, or force a certain amount of time to pass. Looks like exactly what you would want (the default behaviour to be).

[Grumman]

About the original post, why are you so concerned with enclaves?

Because the game's behaviour hurts my suspension of disbelief. Neighbouring enclaves are something that should important to my group of survivors, and having them just roll over and die between sessions is annoying.

Not Romero mod, no. I finally found it again:

http://www.zombiestandardtime.com/

This allows you to make the game not do anything when you're logged out, or limit the amount of time that can pass, or force a certain amount of time to pass. Looks like exactly what you would want (the default behaviour to be).

Thanks, Steel. I don't know when I'll have another go at the game, but I'll be sure to use this when I do.

[Tolya]

I thought the idea of randomised, persistent world where stuff happens and is not centered on the player or upon linear 100% completion was perhaps the only interesting thing about this game.

They botched a few things, but otherwise it is a way more interesting game than any other open world "sandbox".

[Steel]

Shitty mobile browser ate my fucking reply. Summary:

Stuff happening in game while the player character is away due to in game time passing is good, especially if game mechanics work around this eg sleep deprivation forces the character to sleep and others take over your role for that time.

This game has things happen while the player is away. This is terrible as going to sleep or on holiday destroys everything for no good reason as everyone apparently just stuck their thumbs up their arses while you the player were away despite it making no sense for your character to fall into a coma for that duration.

[Tolya]

That's because the world can't maintain itself - that is the underlying problem. In State of Decay you are playing god who sheperds a bunch of lemmings through trouble, but takes occasional breaks, leaving the lemmings to their own devices (and they die).

The focus is wrong: your goal is to maintain the society, but you can't do that while you are away. If your PC was the center of attention, and the world would just be "the stage", then it would make much more sense: you get back to the game after a week and find that circumstances have changed - not necessarily fucking up your game, but forcing you to deal with new problems, or reformat your strategy etc.

Sadly, the way it is now, once you have an established base and outposts, you would only have to visit the game each other day to make sure the lemmings are stocked with food, meds, ammo and protection measures around the outposts, because they can't do that themselves. However, making the society maintain itself would make the game play itself, which reminds me of a problem mentioned by a Stalker dev who was discussing some features removed during beta testing. The player would be no longer needed.