Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true

The game will definately become harder to play, but I personally hope it won't be too hard...Tons of players will leave if this happens.

Hehe..... yes we agree it might come true :-) (we have voted yes)

Check out our recent post on some of the combat features (explosives are also coming soon):

http://blog.zombiepandemic.com/Blog...-soon.aspx

Definitely more realism. Personally I've always found fighting for day - to - day survival to be more challenging ( and hence more fun ) compared to a typical zombie shooter. When you actually need to hoard food you find because you never know if you can ensure that you are going to be able to feed yourself in future. When you need to find and keep medical supplies because you never know when you'll be injured and bleed out to death because you forgot to pack bandages. When you have to save up your firearm for only the greatest emergencies, and rely on stealth and quieter weapons otherwise because you don't want a horde wailing down on your position...

On the economy side - Personally i think the fact that you can get unlimited supplies from NPCs kind of takes away a large part of the challenge. On the other hand, managing other aspects like loot drop rates (hence adjusting the ease of obtaining money) is a reasonable alternative to limiting the availability of supplies outright. Sure, you have an unlimited supply of ammo, you just won't be able to afford to pay for it if you don't plan carefully.

A small gripe I have is how a random encounter only means a single zombie, and the real hordes with the potential to be scary can be avoided if you don't choose to engage. Also it's far too easy at the moment to run away from an encounter without getting a scratch. Then again, I'm still at map 2,so maybe I haven't seen the worst of it yet - And moreover the planned - for noise/aggro feature hasn't been introduced yet, so I'm hoping that this will be fixed in the future.

I honestly fail to understand how a game where you get everything easy - where the only challenge comes from how fast you can XP up to the next level - can be considered fun. It's why you always see people getting to the peak, then getting bored and quitting because there's nothing interesting to do.

A game that offers challenge every day, that makes me excited about what's going to be thrown in my face today, that makes me juggle extremely limited resources, that offers no guarantees that my character will reach home safely after a mission - now that's a game that will be fun for a long time to come.

For now, it does appear that ZP is moving in that direction. I'm eager to see what else is to come.

The more real the things are the better. It will add a degree of difficulty when you actually need to juggle resources. I think that offline time shouldn't get any more difficult however. The current barricades aren't really a challenge, more of an annoyance. I want to either see the barricades grow stronger and be able to add traps or have like I have said, random events which could impede you.

Oh and I really like the random hordes idea. I think there should be more 'Huge Horde of Zombies.' Actually, come to think of it, I haven't seen any in quite some time. Are there still those unspecific giant hordes? Or did those get replaced with large groups of individual zombies? Because I have seen plenty of those, especially on Map 3.

I agree with the random hordes or zombie groups idea. I find it way too easy to travel from point A to point B in a zombie infested town. All I usually need to do is equip my deagle and I can take out anything that pops out at me. It would be a much more survival oriented experience if I actually faced opposition while traveling.

Summing up from another post found here:
http://blog.zombiepandemic.com/Forum/tabid/65/aff/1/aft/2414/afv/topic/afpgj/1/Default.aspx#19333

We totally understand the fact that high level beta testers are craving for more challenges being level 200+.

The reason is obviously what other have called the “super human issue” others “the zombie safari” as top 10 players have more than a thousand skill points combined including hundreds of HP in total (due to the free 1HP bonus pr. level we originally had), lots of XP from hordes and lucrative looting enabling them to find top equipment and save up lots of money.

These “advantages” don’t apply to new players signing up and thus they experience the game differently.

As stated when you signed up, we are currently in the beta test of the game, not the final game. Part of the beta test processing is releasing new features and balancing the game.

We totally understand that it’s important for players to be competitive and build up their ranks but if you really want to experience the true gameplay in the current beta test stage, starting a new character is actually an interesting experience.

Next step as announced is taking the game in a direction which is much more realistic (more survival horror) than the game experience have previously been. However as we won’t "take away" the skills or levels the top players have earned by say introducing a skill/level cap of 200 (I bet the top10 players wouldn’t like that :-) ) the price of playing your “super human” character will of course be a lot less challenging gameplay.

Guys, this game is a RPG, right? One of the most important things in the RPG games is the level and skill points. When I started to play this game there were already people level 100+. I took the challenge and now I'm in the top 10 players. Sorry, but I don't want to start this challenge again...
There are other ways to balance things out without adding a skill/level cap. For example you can make the zombies have more hp or damage on map 2 and 3; you can add new, harder to kill zombies etc. I'm not sure what you are planning to do next, but please don't add any skill points cap.

i don't understand how being superhuman in halo armor with magic sword, elephant hp and strength is fun
there are thousands of rpgs like that, why here?

Posted By kemeD on 28-06-2011 11:53 PM
i don't understand how being superhuman in halo armor with magic sword, elephant hp and strength is fun
there are thousands of rpgs like that, why here?

Well, this game is more than 1 year old(maybe more)Why didn't you(devs) change this earlier?! People get used to some things, for me this is the option to level up and increase my skill points. That's what I like to do and this is one of the reasons I'm still playing the game. Sorry, but I think it's a bit too late for such drastic changes.

edit: I heard that you're gonna start a new server soon. Why don't you add the skill/level cap to the new server and leave this one as it is?

I believe the game it self borders on 3 years, including alpha, i've been with ZP since the Beta, unsure of which though, for two years... Wow... thats a long time

Change this earlier? You mean change the way skill points work? Balance, earlier the only way to get money was to set your skill points well, now this is no longer necessary, earlier, if you got jumped by a horde at level 5, you didnt stand a chance of surviving. Now you cant meet hordes, and your start eq is good combined with the odds of hitting at close range with gun included in said eq, making all early encounters winable, and tbh i would like to see it progress to the point where the new things (acc at range, critical hits, etc) are helpfull, but still not quite enough, and a little skill, thinking, being clever will help you to your goal

Bleh, im done now

Definitely YES! And i really like the idea of the hunger system. (if there is any plan for it)
it will also be a challenge to get food not only just to go out there and kill as much as possible zombies in the way...
harder enemies will come and the HP needs 2 Skill points to earn 1 HP???


And about game balancing;

this game was heading for a melee MUST user/player... here is my thought:

1.Ammo is expensive(of course and it MUST due to the apocalyptic event that happen)
2.looting is harsh (MUST BE too)
3.RELOADING! reloading cost SP! could you believe it?
i mean whats the base for this? that every action you take will cost you an SP?
Imagine a melee user at lvl 200 and a ranged weapon user at the same level,
1 swing, 1 kill = 1 shot, 1 kill is in effect 20 zeds each
melee user spends 20 SP, ranged user??? minimum 21! no doubt about it min 21 SP spend!
what more if your using sniper rifle or shotgun etc...
heres the thing using a gun takes more SP than using a melee weapon...
imagine using a lobo or zanbato against 20 zombies and using a m107:
20 Stamina points spend on swinging and you'll spend 22 stamina point on pulling a gun's trigger! what more if youre using a gold deagle or anaconda special!


I think it is BETTER if there is no SP cost in RELOADING...
after all the ammo is expensive and looting is harsh...


BTW IM A MELEE USER TOO!
Im just being a fair to ranged weapon user and IM NOT ONLY saying things what best suited ME
but for all... (ooooops! im not pointing finger here! LOL!)

I agree david, but the only way to make melee-ranged more balanced is to increase the SP for melee combat. I think that the major flaw in your proposed problem though is that you assume melee weapons are a one shot kill. The highest damaging melee weapon does 17 damage at most in a single shot. The best ranged weapon can do up to 160 damage per turn spread out through ten shots. If both weapons were facing a zombie with 30 health, it would take at least two turns with the zanbato and most likely only one with the minigun. This excludes critical hits, which also adds some balance into the system.

I'm going to go ahead and post the minority opinion (most likely the very very minority opinion): points and levels and gear with exponentially increasing effectiveness destroy the longterm viability of every RPG for virtually every character, and many of the players behind them. KemeD made a valid point about super armor and weapons, and now that they're here people will fight tooth and nail to avoid nerfing. As a player, ask yourself this question: what draws you to the zombie genre? What brought you to a self-described "survival horror" game? Was it to kill things, collect loot and level up like 100 other RPG's using the same formula for 30 years? Would you care if the pixels you destroyed were goblins or robots or vampires or gang-members if you hadn't just finished watching a zombie mini-series on AMC?

I think the developers have put a lot of excellent work into this game, and I love the fact that they're a small dedicated group who communicate with, engage and listen to the community (unlike certain other condescending and apathetic larger online gaming companies I won't mention). Their path as game developers, even though it's a labor of love, is in itself a survival horror story where they try to thread the needle between the ideal, the achievable and the affordable. But I think the game is reaching a critical and necessary identity crisis.

On the one hand you have a strategic game set in a dark and constantly dangerous city owned by the dead, low-tech with resources at starvation-level scarcity, with critical decision-making and an air of desperation... clearing and building outposts is a big and sometimes collective achievement, holding them and getting back and forth between them is an ongoing struggle, and there are virtually no "safe zones" that you don't have to rally your fellow players to defend in order to survive. In this game there are no levels requirements to go to other portions of the map, just the promise that a lone explorer wandering the streets will assuredly end up as a chew toy. This game can be complicated and the difficulty might scare away a lot of tourists, but it will have a strong and dedicated, paying playerbase with reasons to keep on playing.

On the other hand you have a dungeon crawl minus the dungeon, a levels grind where dying is usually the product of biting off more than you can chew, and everything and every zombie in the game exists for no other reason than to provide you with target practice and the resulting EXP. Players form clans and concern themselves 100 times more with who levels faster and who erased who's annoying clan spam than the end of the world that's supposedly going on. In this game the undead theme is extraneous and serves as window dressing to the combat system, and it will always have a large pool of casual gamers looking to rise the ranks and kill stuff for a while.

I'm not sure which of these games the players want, or the devs for that matter, but even if you decide to try to split the difference you still have to believe you're working towards one of them as an ideal goal.

Hi there.
I like the idea of more realism and Vrenko's thoughts on the matter.
But just wondering why the flat rate for all improvements. Why not make things increasingly more expensive and harder to get, the higher your character's level, attributes, etc. Scale the cost of hit points, training, etc based on how high it already is. So for a beginner, maybe 1 level point = 2 HP, when they get to a certain threshold 1 point = 1 HP, and then more, and more exponentially as they go up. HP, skills, the lot.
But if a player has focused on marksmanship to a high level, but not close combat then the cost of improving close combat is just as cheap as any character starting out on that skill. Also this would be applied to training time for skills required as well.
Whilst I realise the increasing amount of XP required to level up provides a way of scaling cost of improvement, maybe it needs to be applied to all character attributes. More on this further down.
---
At just level 11 I'd like to have to engage the entire hordes coming at me at once (with an appropriate combined level). One aspect which would give shotguns, burst fire, grenades, explosives and flame throwers, etc a different purpose.
I agree with suggestions of giving premium paying customers benefits but not at the cost of what free players have access to.
It's good the only way constitution can be improved is by leveling up and spending points.
The current SP setup including the benefits Premium customers get is fantastic. It limits everyone so if one person doesn't have a job and can afford to sit at their computer 16 hours a day, they still can't develop a super character that would take a year or more for someone with a job, family and social life. It really helps balance things out. I like that you can have more than one character if you pay, and more SP to play with. (I've been playing free for a month).
I agree the system needs to change to encourage more co-operation to survive and focus on the core idea of the game, rather than scoring zombies just to level up, etc. Although you don't want newbies to be killed off too quickly, so scale things they have to deal with accordingly.
Perhaps look into the idea of skills improving with use. It would take longer than training, but it would contribute to your training, and would need to be carefully thought out before implementing. Shoot a lot to improve marksman, melee combat for the skill (engage in close combat), strength (when hitting), agility (when dodging). Construct barriers for strength. I can't think of activities for all the attributes, but this may open up new ideas and aspects of game play. What I was saying about the increasing cost of skill upgrades would apply here too, but being able to improve by use might tie in well with the exponential cost of training. Maybe you don't have specialists, but say if someone heals people a lot, surely they'll get better at it.
The current character "achievements" show how just providing different goals gives motivation to players try different things out, that may not contribute towards combat and experience.
I like the idea of safe houses, giving players the means to benefit from co-operating. Construct storage to have the means to hoard and share weapons, ammo, etc, and meaning lower level clan members have immediate access to these.
On the other hand I've read that at least one persons views safe houses too difficult or expensive to build and maintain with too few benefits. Maybe there could be more ways to benefit from sharing safe houses? What are the benefits of building build safe houses with training facilities, when you've got the ones provided to begin with?
What if high level characters could make themselves available at a specific safe house for training a specific skill? The benefit of this? The higher their level, the better the training?
Meaning that whilst you can do this already at the sites offered to beginners, a clan could really benefit from high level characters prepared to dedicate their services for the betterment of the whole. Although, again game play would have to be thought out... this could get ridiculously out of hand without limits. Another avenue that might be beneficial to game play if skills were to cost exponentially more the higher their level.
And why not have this behaviour encouraged in high level characters (over a threshold) who will gain real benefits in some form from doing this... perhaps when they're at this point it takes a lot to improve skills, HP, attributes, etc. So they can "park" their character in a safe house with training facilities offering training in a skill for a much longer time than characters can train for, a week perhaps? Meaning clan members can rely on that training being available for the week. And at the end of the week the high level character will have something to show for it. I'd expect by this stage the player will have paid Premium membership and be developing new characters... just putting it out there.
---
One way to cap super characters could be offering a finite list of weapons and armor available. At the very top there are some nasty mean weapons and armor that can take a pounding, but that's it - it's an apocalypse after all. And as they continue to level up they're going to have to find other ways to deal with increasing dangers. I think high level (or any level) characters need to feel vulnerable to some kind of real threat.
I figure those who have invested a lot of time into the game, have built up their character and now have something to lose, will appreciate new risks, more challenging dangers and different goals as it becomes more and more expensive to improve their character.
Instead they are provided with new harder goals that matter to the story, and are more valuable clan members who can offer lower level character clan members benefits.
Another thought, how high is the risk of being infected? How long after being infected before you're passed the hope of being cured (by something other than a bullet or axe to the head). Perhaps once you've gained enough experience and skills, these risks could be introduced as part of the game play, along with the means to counter it. Perhaps there's a temporary way to keep the infection at bay, but a constant thing to be managed - but how this is implemented needs to be thought out carefully so that it's balanced, adds to the game but without being off putting or a major hindrance to meaningful game play. Just a thought.
IMHO introducing P vs P will radically change the way the game is played, and I'm not entirely sure I like the direction it could turn. Going back to the idea of using clan safe house storage for hoarding and sharing weapons, ammunition, supplies: If P vs P is made available it doesn't take long to figure out why this useful game aspect for fighting Zombies, Raiders and survival, could become a big problem for weaker or more benevolent players & clans.
I think making the game more challenging and give characters more ways to help and improve each other, more story involvement, whilst the increasing difficulty of dangers and improving yourself as you reach high levels (done well) will give interesting challenges without the need for us to have to join a clan immediately for protection from other players/clans.
If player vs player has a strong appeal, eg knowing that you're pitting yourself against another real player - perhaps developers could establish a limited and dedicated team who meet their criteria and commit to dedicating a period of time each day playing special characters/opponents/creatures that are a threat that need to be dealt with by all other characters.
I suspect their interface to the game and how they play their part will be need to be very different. E.g. they may get to play teams of raiders, very limited ways they can be improved, and the interface would be fast. Possibilities: quickly scout around an area, take on players they meet (and I'd expect a lot of raiders would die in the process). While scouting will be able to see all safe houses they come across. Then organise their team for making raids on safe houses. If the team is successfully break down the barrier attempts to do as much damage as possible to the house's facilities, take as much as possible from storage for the team to carry back and hoard at a den or similar. Clans may track them down (another game aspect that could be introduced), beat the team and claim all the supplies the raider team hoarded.
For the dedicated team you want the process to be fun and engaging for them. Maybe play around with the idea of raider dens, respawning raiders, how much map the team have revealed and safe houses to take on.
There would need to be a way that safe houses can be raided that gives the clan members an out so they don't all get slaughtered every time there's a successful raid.
How this is implemented and what role they play in the story I have no idea, it would need to be explored and thought out.
It's just the first idea I came up with if there were such a team providing that element of players having real people to defend themselves from, fight, beat and pillage.
---
A couple of other related threads
http://blog.zombiepandemic.com/Forum/tabid/65/aff/1/aft/2529/afv/topic/Default.aspx
http://blog.zombiepandemic.com/Forum/tabid/65/aff/1/aft/2516/afv/topic/Default.aspx
Thanks for your time.

^AAaaaaahhhhhh!

Was it something I said?

Its a *small* block of text Dx

I can hear mumblings of "where to begin??".
My apologies.

^kinda so many words well done though.

I definetly like the addition of realism. some ideas for random events-
1: traveling

trip and fall- -5hp when fast traveling, and 3-7*weight% chance of damaging weapon.
pick-pocket- someone bumps into you and darts off with 8-10% of your money
mugger- choose to fight them, or give them money

2:safe house

locker theft- if you have anything in your locker, its gone now. 20-35% chance (goes down to 2-5% chance of happening with a padlock)
generator failure- current training is interrupted. 0.5*#rooms/generator lvl%
water treatment failure- all current people in safehouse experience -5hp .5*#people/water teatment facility lvl%
fire- one room is destroyed (down to just cleared space) 30/room lvl%

3:shopping

weapon discharge- (firearm) as you look, your weapon shoots you luckily in a non vital place. 5/marksmanship%
threatened- shop keep won't let you near until you unequip all weapons. (mainly just a nuisance but if you forget to re-equip...)

@ Kwilson

1. TRAVELLING TRIP AND FALL - (-5HP) nah cant be man...
fast travelling was essential especially when rescuing incapacitated players... you help someone and you loose SP for travelling (and -5HP as well?) maybe someday no one wants to save someone if that happen...

2. PICK POCKET - maybe this is PvP., but conflict will be higher levels will not LOOT and thus fight or pick pocket someone., your a lower level and choose not to fight and handed them 8-10% of your money, easy cash cow...

3. SAFE HOUSE LOCKER THEFT - wow! this will be like dont find or loot anymore just steal on the locker... when this happen, maybe clan leaders would just eventually dismantle all SH lockers just to stop tension between clan members...

4. GENERATOR FAILURE - 10 hrs of training and you dont know it just stop? (you log out, go to sleep then when you login in the morning nothing happen)

5. WATER TREATMENT FACILITY FAILED/ FIRE - whats the cause? fire happen you should clear the space again.. worse the whole SH was gone... LoL

6. SHOPPING WEAPON DISCHARGE - eventually ZP got a product warranty and a product controller... if you find some malfunctioning weapon or accidentally hits you on non vital parts you may call 1-800-ZP. if no one is attended to pick up your call, you may write to them @ (blue) beta feedback...

pardon me... just having fun on no. 6 =)

7.SHOP KEEP THREATENED - it will cause lots of feedback why they cant enter the store... after all decoding this will take some of their precious time, just mainly for nuisance...

peace

@ avidson:

I was more or less just throwing out some numbers for the percentages.

for the fast travel, its not a guaranteed happening. the weight your carrying icreases the likelyhood of this. and this percentage will also take affect if you damage the weapon.

Most of these are npc caused, though stealing from lockers would be an easy career, maybe make a way to discover who did it.

sometimes life ain't fair. shit happens. (#3,4,5)

for number 6- lol

7 i didn't really like it either but realistically, i wouldn't let anyone in my store waving around a M16...

(3,4,5) shit happens...


yeah i know that shit do happen, but it will escalate some issue here especially for players and your fellow clan member., ok let ne put it this way...

what if you found out that it was me who stole your twinkies at the locker? what will you do? were in a same clan., i cant steal some things in your locker if were not on the same clan... so your gonna say that it was me who stole your twinkies., what about the other clans? what if they go on global chat? then it would be a mess...

this will be like stole something on a HIGH LEVEL PLAYER...
after all if your a noob locker has no purpose to you.,
what will you put on the locker if your on level 1-10? so the high level players has the tendency of putting something on the locker thats worth something...


as i said the pickpocket and locker theft would be easy career, high levels would pickpocket low levels, and low levels steal on high levels locker... but what if the high levels dont put anymore things on their locker? what happens to low levels?

Well I voted yes, but I'm not sure if "realism" is the right word for me here.
What most of you guys seem te mean is the game should just get "harder". I'm afraid this will, in practice, mean "less fun". And that is quite the opposite of what we really want now, isn't it?

The thing that really bothers me is the role zombies have in this game. They dont seem te pose any real danger to the player. Worst case is you die, and you stand up again. And this can only happen if you choose to attack a strong horde of zombies. So for me, and I guess other people to, zombies are just easy XP.

An example for this is the sewer system. A great idea, easy traveling route to bypass the zombies. But who really uses it for this? Traveling above ground can only give you some random encounters with low level zombies. Not much danger to bypass. On the contrary, right now traveling by sewer will only mean you will find less loot and get less XP.

I'm not one to complain without a solution, so here's my two cents on the issue.

- If there are zombies on a block and you travel to it, have these zombies attack the player. If there are more then one (group), then have the closesed one to the player (shortest distance) attack. (instead of the "random encounter") This will solve two problems, travel will be more realistic and challenging (making fast travel and the sewer more useable), and on the higher maps, you will actually encounter more high level zombies and have to fight them. Maybe bino's can be used to preview the block, so you can maneuver around spots with to high lvl zombies. imho this will make traveling more fun AND realistic.

- Standing for a long time in the streets, or sleeping there, should be next to impossible or at least lethal. Maybe the hordes that are present or spawn in the blocks can slowly eat away at the HP of the player, the same way barricades are right now?
The current system of getting a "random encounter" in that sort of situation is only a free XP bonus for me right now. This will make finding a safe spot to rest before logging off almost mandatory, which I think will add to the fun for the survivors.

Well I guess what I'm trying to say is at least try to balance the realism with enough fun. I'm afraid there are some big issues most players have with this game that will probably need more fun than difficulty atm. (lack of trade and player interaction). With the ideas presented above in place, clearing blocks from zombies will become a more important thing. And this is something that players can already do together. So that will probably help in those area's as well.

As for player interaction, maybe a building looting system can be implemented, for the blocks that just have boring closed off buildings.
You push a "building recon mission" button or something, and the map shows the block you did that on in a special color. Other players can go there and push a "join building recon button".
as soon as a certain number of player have responded (four seems reasonable), you generate a text and reward based outcome to all the players who have joined. Maybe some nice rare loot, some money and some XP or just guys dieing and losing HP if all went bad. To minimize the impact on the rest of the game this action can offcourse be limited to once per day per player, and/limited only to members of the same clan.

This mechanism can be used to do a ton of other stuff together offcourse to.

Well thats more than enough from me for now, let me know what you guys think!

: Davidson:

i planned them to be more like npc happenings, but we are talking about realism and hell, SHTF, id steal, kill, and rob to keep me and my friends alive.
low levels may be at a stark disadvantage, IF it goes PVP, but perhaps have a level cap on who you can steal from like "pick on someone your own size"

Needs WAY more realism (IMHO). I was on test server a couple of years back and just started playing on live server near the end of June. I am already level 28 and can easily get a level a day whenever I want. I feel absolutely no satisfaction or challenge with my ability to level this quickly.
The reason this is happening is because I knew exactly which kind of weapons I would need to level quickly in the early stages of the game - SMGs or Assault rifles. I knew that these would allow me to kill as many zombies as I wanted to without any significant risk to my own character's health.
Having been to the College Surplus Store several times I had already set my sights on the Zombie Atomic Disintegrator (VkMp 9 SMG). Both the SMG and the ammo were readily available at the Campus Store, so no worries there. The looting was free and easy once I figured out which loot nodes were profitable. I was quickly able to save some cash and then trade in my antique shotgun and 9mm Hi Power handgun, to buy the SMG.
All of my expectations came true, sadly. In map 1, I can enter a map grid, click the enemies tab, kill 15 zombies, gain several hundred XP - often leveling right in the middle of the firefight, and never lose a single health point. All it costs me are 30-40 SP and 100 9mm ammo or so - which I can buy from any of dozens of merchants around the city. I eat the Twinkies 'cause they still taste the same - not because I need the HP.
AFTER I bought the SMG, I picked up a premium-60 membership and so I have plenty of SP to go exploring, looting and killing. The only real challenge I am facing at this point is trying to manage the Clan that I created (game needs some clan rules, bad)
As a result of the ease of acquiring fully automatic weapons and ammunition, I have stockpiled several hundred rounds in my safehouse locker space, so I don't even have to make a side-trip to buy ammo.
Bottom line: I would have no problems enjoying this game, if I had to grind my way through the zombies with a crowbar or fireaxe, stopping to apply bandages, eat pain pills or whatever to stay alive. Having a sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun under my coat with my stash of 5 or 6 questionable looking 12ga shells for those special rare situations would be fun too. But I would like the challenge of actually having to think about where I might be able to loot or barter for more usable shells if the need arose - instead of just going across the street to the gunshop and walking out with several boxes of factory quality 12ga shells.

First of all, I wouldn't worry about pissing off the high level players. They're bound to get bored and quite anyway, that's what high levels do. I, for one, wouldn't mind starting over again.

I currently fall under the munchkin class of player. I come in, kill stuff for an hour or so, loot and then sleep right there in the street. Its a bit like cleaning under the bed, its not the task that is fun but what you find doing it. The primary challenge is finding a shop to sell all my loot. The second most challenge is buying paint.

Wielding a fire axe I average just over 1 sp per kill with no cost for ammunition. At earlier levels the chainsaw averages 2 sp with no cost for ammunition. But at the earlier levels the money saved on ammunition went to healthcare.

Now, I am in full agreement that the game needs a bit more challenge, but because that usually means that the game designer goes all happy and it suddenly becomes Cthulhu-esk, where death is a certainty, the only question is how long will you survive, before the inevitable, I am reluctant to say so.

If that's what people want, they should be playing die2night. Dying is not fun, survival is. The point of a game is to provide a false sense of accomplishment. Ergo, the more variety, and greater number of things to do and/or accomplish, the more fun the game. Take a lesson from the old Sid Myers games.

Munchkins want easy things to do and accomplish, gamers want difficult challenges that require thought and skill. Variety provides a means of keeping both parties happy. The trick being to balance the medium to make it challenging enough to not be boring, but not really difficult.

A few suggestions, and I am aware that some of these have been stated previously.

Fear of Loss: As the game stands there is no real fear of loss. The only thing you can lose is sp, and that only serves to minimize the amount of entertainment you get from a session. Not a good loss.

You go unconscious and wake up an hour later in your skivies clutching a can of dog food. I jest, but if you're laying around unconscious, assuming for some ungodly reason, you didn't get eaten, you are going to be lucky to not get robbed. Of something, if not everything. Make those lockers more interesting.

What about injuries, temporary or permanent stat loss. Lose a fight marksmanship drops by 5 for X sp, or a permanent loss. Depending on the type and severity of the injury. Another form of loss.

Of course when you get high level, these aren't that dangerous. I like the idea of high levels having to work at survival harder. Performing tasks, to prevent turning. Do or die. People who don't want to lose their achievement would have to work to keep it. And many games survive with resets. But I wouldn't recommend setting a cap, or making it too difficult. Its just that, after a point, now you have something else to do. My character has killed thousands of zombies in melee, I've been bitten a few times too many. I'm sure. Am I immune?

(Ammusing, Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton just came on Pandora.) Anyway...

Limited Shops: Do I need to explain? Granted loot is easy to come by, not a problem, part of the fun. But the shops are ridiculous. Few ideas.

1. Hourly, Daily, Weekly reset of limited goods, when they sell out, they're gone.

2. What gets sold to the shop gets sold at the shop.

3. Option for S.H. to set up a shop. With fixed prices.

First, I don't use clans or safe houses. I just like the idea.

a. Clan sells from a warehouse.
b. Clients sell to the warehouse.
c. Shop warehouse has options to buy up to X of Y, And to not sell something that is below number Z. Default set to max, so that shop buys, but doesn't sell.

Obviously the shop would be funded by the clan. And also by selling excess items. Allows a way for none clan members to benefit from your safe house. Would also make a handy, balanced, trading system.

Random Story Events: Not sure how the current random encounter system works. But...

Random event generator.

%chance, nothing happens <- adjusted by, and representing stealth (Smarts)
%chance, to engage solo zombie <- adjusted by, and representing stealth (Smarts)
%chance, to engage group, selected from location traveling to or from. <- modified by # of zombie groups at both locations & adjusted by, and representing stealth (Smarts)
%chance, of random event. Something happens, you find/lose loot, money or see something interesting.
%chance, of random challenge. These should be:

a. Something happens. The hook.
b. Choice. What do you want to do?
c. Challenge, probably based on stats. No redo, one chance.
d. Result, good or bad depending on choices and challenge result.
(Simple version, challenges can be more complicated.)

Important note, make multiples of each with varying results to keep people from memorizing what they should do. The same choices, create different outcomes.

Also, If you want help with writing story, or events, I'd be happy to help with some creative writing. I'm sure others would too. Weeding through other people's writing might be easier then doing all the work yourself.

I'm an unpublished writer, a D&D DM, and I enjoy creating Pen & Paper, Role Playing systems in my spare time. So, I do this stuff anyway.