Someone was complaining that they couldn't get 25 squares away from their location without falling out of SPs and that got me
thinking.


Day 1
New player arrives. He has 1440SP to blow on anything. The ZP world is his oyster.

New player runs out of SPs. The world is a cruel and hard place. Suddenly he has to worry about SP regen. Suddenly everything costs too much SP. Suddently he takes a (desperate) interest in getting SP giving items. At this point he either quits or waits for day 2.

Day 2
New player logs, finds he has 480SP. Runs around the map far less, loots, probably ends up out of points in the middle of nowhere. Complains about lack of SP, SP costs, bitches on how dead frontier is so much cooler than ZP. Spouts random profanity. Proclaims to quit. Very vaguely considers going premium.

Day 3
(Not so) new player logs, finds he again has 480SP (or less). Complains less and plays, quits or goes premium.


I just find that this "world is your oyster" 1440SP vs "I have no SPs and I must loot" 480SP shock therapy to be a bit... extreme. I don't know if this is a deliberate "get'em hooked and premium or get'em out by day 3" business model or not, but it seems to me that new players haven't really invested enough of "themselves" into the game by day 3 to seriously consider going premium.

Someone suggested refreshing the SP pool when you level up, and I tend to lean towards a similar idea. Not necessarily when you level or when you complete a mission, but a progessive decrease of SP points instead of a radical one. As players begin to feel the SP crunch they should also feel more and more the pull of going premium.

Maybe give them premium regen with a 250SP drop in max storeable SP over a 4 day period? Just a more reasonable (and lenghtier) carrot to keep them interested for a few days, before they're faced with the "Premium or 480SP a day" stick.


PS: And yes, I know most ZP players neither quit nor go Premium. I'm talking about new players ZP loses by the sudden SP crash.

I think most new player just quit. From what I read around the forums the drop rates have been adjusted to make it to difficult for them to find items and enjoy their time with what little sp they have. Drop rates should be increased to encourage them to stay. If they never find anything then they will just think it sucks and never come back.

I don't see them complaining about drop rates. I DO see them going "Help Help I'm outta SP!" or "Where do I buy caffeine pills?" or "I gotta wait for my SPs to refill?! This game sucks!"

Holy crap. I suggested a carrot and now you're giving away the carrot farm!


A full month's premium for 49 credits is a wonderful deal. Too wonderful in fact. If it was up when I paid for premium I would have certainly taken it instead of laying down my hard earned currency. And kept on taking the deal until I ran out of credits. Considering my sponsorpay/super reward options were fairly limited, I could have maybe squeezed two months out of free premium.

And I can assure you that I would be far less motivated to pay for premium at the end of those two months than I was at the end of those first few days when I went premium. Especially considering the current yearly subscription got jacked up by almost 100%.

So please consider these two things:

a) Apparently some people can squeeze ALOT of credits out of sponsorpay/super rewards. If they can manage 49 a month they'll never become paying customers.

b) The "I must have it!" eagerness factor to get premium tends to slide downwards as days and weeks go by. If someone can fully explore the game in two months time then that someone will be far less willing to invest real live money into paying for premium at that point.

Like I said, it's a wonderful deal. But if you wanna make money it should be a week's worth of premium, not a month's worth.

I been playin 4 or 5 days now, and TBH I agree with him.

I think you give to much first day with WAYYYYY to little explination. I am on my 6 or 7th quest and I have just enough SP to get there and back. I litteraly passed out outside the shooting range and had to wait 6 miuntes (i was -1 sp) to get in for a 10 hr training session. I do think you would do better to give them a smaller boost spread out over a few days. I know presently the game has taken a nose dive for me. I have learned not to search needlessly and to try to never cover the same ground twice, but presently I get about 30 minutes of game play per day.

As for drop rates, I do think you should increase the drop rate but base it on days played so at the end of the first week all bonuses are gone. My problem was I created a character and could not complete 5 of the first 6 quests. I was never able to buy but 1 gun, the high powered 9mm. I got weak clothing/armor, practicly no weapons choices, and very little cash from looting. I started a second character after learning a good bit talking to people. This character has gotten every quest, not only gotten the high power 9mm but picked up a shot gun which is awesome. The second character has found 5 BDU jackets with high armor power and boost to encumberance. I also got a backpack with addes even more to encumberance. My second character has gone further, done more, is tougher, better armored, and has way better weapons and ammunition and still has twice the cash as my first character and is not as high a level. Guess my point is, seems like some get great drop/loot rates while another gets really bad ones. Maybe you could help noobies with better paying looting the first few days, and a better chance to find decent armor to help them live.

As for SP, I think the "extra" SP should be given in the form of "heath" pills or what ever, so they know and understand its an added free benifit, not how things will be from now on.

One thing that does bother me, as I just experinced it, why does movement cost different SP? I have seen it cost 2, 3, 4, and now 5 SP just to move?

As for SP, I think the "extra" SP should be given in the form of "heath" pills or what ever, so they know and understand its an added free benifit, not how things will be from now on.
One thing that does bother me, as I just experinced it, why does movement cost different SP? I have seen it cost 2, 3, 4, and now 5 SP just to move?

I agree, instead of granting 1440SP upon character creation, 3 super caffeine pills would be better.

As for the SP cost, I reckon you were in a building when you moved. Moving costs 4SP per tile and entering/exiting buildings cost 1 SP. I'd think that when you saw it cost 2 or 3 SP you were in a room within a building, say at the cult armory and you exit the building, which would total up to 3 SP to move out of 2 rooms. 5 SP would probably be when you were inside a building and you traveled 1 block away from the building you were in.

However, if you are overencumbered movement costs will increase as well. Also, you can't fast travel if you're overencumbered.

Thanks for the info mate.

The game is intended to be played 20 - 30 mins a day.

Posted By Reaper_666 on 06-08-2011 10:56 PM
I agree, instead of granting 1440SP upon character creation, 3 super caffeine pills would be better.

Agree. Having the potential for all those points, is far better than having them from the start.

You need to 'act' to get those extra points, but more importantly you get a better sense of the worth of those extra points.

I agree in theory, but disagree in pratical terms. For a simple reason: Once trading is implemented what's stopping people from scamming newbies or creating clone accounts and syphoning off super caffeine pills into their main accounts?

Creating untradable super cafferine pills would be one solution to this. But I prefer whatever's already been implemented and shown to work. And max SP reduction after 24 hours is a tried and tested feature.

I cant argue with your logic, and I never knew trading was going to be a new feature, but yes untradable pills would be 1 solution.


I just know the "High" from the first day was hit hard by frustration on the second when I didnt have enough SP to even finish 1 mission. That type of frustration can stop people from a 3rd try.

Old OP, but I thought it was funny because I felt the same way back when I started playing. Needless to say, I ended up buying Premium not too long after day one, but then again the relatively low price made it an easy buy. I guess the high worked for me. : P

I have to say, though, that I really can't see myself playing without Premium now. Even if I play daily, it's such a big difference. I don't think I could do much with just 480 SP if I stopped being Premium, so I can only imagine how regular players must feel.

On a side note, I notice the ability to accumulate 1440 SP over two days does compel me to skip a day of playing and then burn the entire SP pool in one go. Thus, it makes playing less tedious and increases the duration of my play sessions, while also allowing me to train more often. So perhaps having to rely on Premium isn't as bad as one might think.

Still, I wonder how new players feel right now when they're faced with the first-day bonus - and the loss of it.

Zombies everywhere! I'm scared shitless and just trying to survive. I only got into town a few days ago, maybe a week, who knows since it seems like the sky has been black since the plague of undead descended and I can't tell day from night half the time. Starved and on edge I bunk down a lot on Campus since there seems to be a lot of people coming and going through (and however half-assed those military guys are at least they are trying to keep things safe and running). I mostly stick to myself so I don't know who I can trust...but I listen a lot. And I hear people talking about the old days, how things have become harder as the pandemic wears on.

But I remember waking up on my first day. It was hard even getting into the city. After the city was shut off (mostly) from the outside world, rumors were flying. Some said the city had been overrun by zed so it was walled off. But there were also rumors that the city had been cleared of the pandemic and was closed to sequester the survivors for safety. Since things sucked everywhere in the country I had visited since it all started I opted to hope that the city was clear. That's why I came back.

When I reached the river my hope was renewed. There was a small group running a ferry service claiming the rumors were true, the city was safe. They took all my money as payment to cross, but at the time it seemed worth it, to finally be in a place free of zombies again. We waited for a few hours before launching, they claimed to wait for other potential customers to show up, indeed a mother with a young child came at one point, but they were turned away since they didn't have any money or supplies. I should have known something was wrong. Still, I wanted so badly to believe.

Finally we launched and made our way slowly across the river. I remember awkwardly getting off the boat at some run down out of the way dock which immediately felt wrong if the city really were free of zed. I remember seeing a small group of people waiting. And I remember a loud noise and a terrible pain like my head was being knocked off with a shovel and then nothing.

I woke up who knows how much later. There were people running around everywhere, blood and guts flying, mostly urban cowboys wrangling zombies for fun as much as for survival, who I quickly realized had been in the city quite a while and were used to the madness. I scrambled for cover in the shadows and waited for things to calm down, but as other survivors came and went it seemed like they couldn't entirely eliminate the zombie threat on that street corner alone. I surveyed my surroundings, some city block I didn't recognize, and checked my person for any of the supplies I had come with. Apparently those evil bastards running the ferry service were only content in telling me they were taking my money and waited to knock me unconscious before taking my pack with a weeks worth of food and and a police issue pistol I had recovered from a dead police officer somewhere in Jersey. Not to mention personal items, pictures of my family and friends I managed to salvage before I watched them all die.

To my surprise though I found things that didn't belong to me. The 9mm snub nose pistol was a piece of crap, but I was grateful to discover I wasn't entirely defenseless. I think there were some pain killers or caffeine pills, can't remember now, and some other miscellany stuffed in my pockets as well. There was also a wallet that didn't belong to me, but before I could open it I realized the gunfire and hack and slash had gone quiet and a whole other awful sound filled the air, growing louder each second. Looking up I realize that I was now the only human left on the block, the zombies no longer distracted by the noise and activity of others playing through as it were, found the scent of my stationary flesh irresistible. Hiding in the shadows doesn't hide you from unoccupied zombies.

I ran, more scared than I'd ever been in my life, my adrenaline shot through the roof. Who knew which direction I was headed but after a few blocks I seemed to lose the groups that had been following me. It seemed like every block had zombies in some corner. While keeping my eye on one particularly large group that hadn't seen me I turned a corner and ran headlong into some freakish baby zombie and his teenage sister, I didn't even think to run, they were so close and right in front of me. Being that scared I could barely aim, but this demon family was pretty easy to put down. Standing over their already rotted corpses I realized I was finally out of sight of any zed so I finally finished checking my person for items though I still couldn't calm my nerves.

The wallet was the most telling. It indicated I had an apartment somewhere north of my current location if memory served now that I had a moment to check out my location on the map I also I found of the city. The map was a satellite view printed on a grid, no street names or other markings except for a dot on the block where I had apparently been left for dead and where my apartment was supposedly located. The only problem was that while I had lived in the city years ago, the marked location was not my apartment. The whole thing was damned mysterious and terrifying.

The rumors of the city being clear of zombies was not only untrue, it was the opposite of true. I had wandered the countryside looking for other survivors, which were few, and while the zombies were equally terrifying, you rarely saw more than a handful together at once, and mostly one or two a time wandering aimlessly, desperately for human flesh to feed on. But here in this god forsaken city in the first few blocks I might have seen dozens of zed, almost appearing to be working in packs like dogs, cornering their prey. So many zed everywhere. My terror gave me another shot of adrenaline in the form of sheer panic and I began moving quickly from block to block.

Along with the wallet was a cryptic message, something about heading south to the campus. The message implied there might be other people and it seemed like the best destination, my supposed apartment could wait. So that was the general direction I headed in. Later I would learn there is a mysterious angel group that go by the name of "DEVS" who do what they can, mostly behind the scenes to help people who find themselves stuck in the city. Apparently it was these "DEVS" who had left me the wallet, map, gun, and a few supplies.

I hear people talk about the "DEVS" a lot. But it seems like nobody really knows who they are or what their motives are. But to hear people talk we are greatly indebted to them. But I've also heard whispers that the "DEVS" might not be as helpful as we were being led to believe. I for one am grateful. Without the "DEVS" I would have been dead were I lay after getting knocked over the head by those crooks from the river and dumped in the city.

But honestly if the "DEVS" had the power to get me a message, a few supplies, and a gun, I would just as soon they would have dropped me off in a safer location with a bunch of stims and caffeine pills or whatever until I got my bearings. As it was, that first day I wandered so far (or it seemed far at the time) and managed to meet folks at the campus and even do several missions for the military there before finally running out of stamina. Since then, I can barely do one mission to help out and then get back to a useful place to rest, study, or train for the night before I run out of stamina.

As it turns out, or at least the rumors are, when the "DEVS" find someone new to the city in trouble, they swoop in and make sure they have basic provisions and then shoot them full of stims so they have this incredible rush of energy. The theory is they want to give you a fighting chance on your first day in hell, long enough to get your bearings. Sure it worked, apparently it was the stim shot that woke me up before I was eaten alive passed out in the street, but that stim shot also gave me a false sense of energy (and paranoia) that I couldn't maintain from day to day (except the paranoia) without finding more stims.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what the "DEVS" did for me, but I think I would have preferred they had left me with several strong doses of stims so I could ration them out over the first week. While I sit here tired and shivering in the hall on campus waiting for the next foray they might have for me and enough stamina to get back to the gym to build some strength, I remember that first day and regret how I blew all that energy without knowing really where I was going and what needed done. Now that I have my bearings I could have used that gift from the "DEVS" so much more wisely. When that first day boost wore off I was in a world of hurt, still am.

Luckily I find food fairly often so I am not hungry, but my stamina just doesn't hold up. I've heard there are some kind of "premium" foods you can buy that have some kind of super nutrients or something (more mysteries from the "DEVS" group I would guess) that are engineered to somehow give you more stamina and apparently help you recover your stamina faster. I'm seriously thinking about it, because sitting here in the cold wondering if I'll run of steam on my next run for Lieutenant Wilson is scaring the shit out of me. Plus I'm bored as hell in the meantime.

At least I've figured out decent strategies for looting and a few shops to buy and sell at. But I haven't found time or energy to even explore my supposed apartment hinted at in the mysterious wallet the "DEVS" left for me, which might have valuable clues but it's on the other side of town from campus and not knowing what I might find when I get there I have chosen to use my limited stamina on looting and running missions for the "military" until I've secured myself better. I've managed to get a decent shot gun and stash some money and supplies. Hopefully soon I will dare venture beyond the missions the Lieutenant doles out.

For now I'll use these message boards I've found around the city to communicate with all you other survivors. Who knows, myabe the "DEVS" read these same boards. Maybe some day I'll figure out what happened.

I'm on my fifth day of playing and I haven't had any complaints with the, "first time", bonuses. My biggest complaints so far involve the scope of what you can do in the game and having virtually no information on what to do, how to do it, or why it matters. I followed the instructions of the first mission taking you to the college campus, and after that, I really just lucked out that I ended my games for the day in that area and didn't get mobbed by zombies when I came back later... which hasn't happened to me, but apparently, that's a possibility.

I'm starting to figure out which questions to ask, and have been searching the forums for answers, but I rarely find the info I'm looking for, even with the search feature. For example, I see tons of promotion for clans, but I have yet to see an example of why I should join one. "You can help each other out!", I've read... but I haven't seen info on how that's done. Safehouses, I guess, but I'm only just now learning about those, and know I have no hope of creating one of my own at my current level, and if that's the only advantage to having a clan, I'll just hang around the college campus for now. Crafting weapons? I learned about that on accident when a forum search brought too many results.

So far, I'm having fun, but the game really doesn't teach you anything and digging through the forums is hit-or-miss. For a relevant example: Imaging watching The Walking Dead, but ONLY the last half hour of each episode. You could piece together what was going on, but it would be incredibly frustrating.

@beingzoe:

I see what you did there. Nicely played. ; )


@RampSkater:

I know what you mean - there are still some aspects of the game that are a mystery to me, though most of them have been resolved by a healthy dose of Forum lurking and trial and error. Granted the game is in a beta stage, so there is still much more to come, but perhaps some additional information and guidelines for starters would be adequate. Still, the Help section in-game does have quite a bit of info - have you checked it out already?

As for the benefits of clans, to be honest, right now it's mostly a mix of readily-available safehouses (or so we hope) and having people to chat with. A lone wolf currently can only benefit from special locations and has no locker access, so it's always trickier, but I hear the... "DEVS" : P are thinking about popping in some single-player safehouse things or whatever that was. As for the chat, it seems most clans nowadays are giving up on that part a bit, so I dunno.

I feel it's still better to be in a clan than not, but really, that depends on how you play The Game. Which, by the way, you've just lost. : D

@beingzoe,,,,,

I hope you post more and more =D

@RampSkater,,,,,
You can make your own clan and safehouse at level 5. The main advantages are safety for the night, training facilities that are top end(campus training placed are cut off below level 50 I think). Most importantly is lockers where you can store up to 500 lbs of gear. Living quarters allow you to regenerate SP 25% quicker.

Other then that just having people to ask questions is about it.

Thanks everyone.

The game has been great so far, and in some ways, not having any info is part of the fun because in a real world crisis, you won't have an FAQ. I'll keep checking the forums for info and probably join a clan at some point, but for now, I'm still riding the learning curve.

(...) because in a real world crisis, you won't have an FAQ.

In a real world crisis, you wouldn't be calmly playing a browser videogame in the comfort of your room, either. : P

Just because the game tries to be realistic enough doesn't mean we should be clueless about things. Not that the game doesn't have a decent Help section, because it does, but you know what I mean.