Zombie update: Constructive Feedback

Settings for Always day or always night or even a timer to show how much left of said time

 

Save/pause option. Zombies aren't really exciting when you do well so pausing/saving would be really nice.
Also, easier micro-managing bots. It should be possible to just click a bot and then just click some place to make him holding position there.

 

I agree. Also a bug I found. Small, but annoying for the circumstances I was in. Well you know how when you try to wall off a portal that a Wraith spawns to blow a hole in it. Well there's a bug that after you destroy the portal when you wall off where the portal used to be a Wraith spawns out of no where to blow it up as if the portal was still there.

At the moment you have 3 minutes building and 3 minutes Zombies. 4-5 minutes seems better to me.

Please, PLEASE make it so Migrants can climb up notches.

Also wider maps would be good too.

When you start, you sometimes start with one Archer with half a heart, two Archers with full health or just be yourself. More stuff would be cool like 1 Knight with one and a half hearts and one Archer with full, or two Knights instead of Archers, or a Builder, a Knight, and and Archer. Lots of different compositions.

 

I'm getting used to the new lighting system, i think it adds an element of reality to the construction of buildings, and fighting in the dark, albeit confusing, is really quite fun. Haven't managed to pull off many stealth attacks with the archer yet, but that will just take time; time that i am all too willing to give to this game.
From an archer's perspective it is a mite off-putting that the zoom-out function has been removed; i always saw it as the function of the archer to see the range of the battle field, placing shafts where support was needed most, easily rather than hunting people with a limited scope. This may just be a reaction to the change that will melt into familiarity with subsequent battles, but for the moment it seems a small inconvenience.

Other than that i've found the game perfectly enjoyable, and i'd like to say a huge thank you for making it so.

 

Its really fun to play this update, the new light system gives a bunch of possibilities to fight (Traps, Ambush).
I personally need some matches to realize all the new things like the change of the bombs (they are really nice now) and less exploits through buildings (mhm... it was called elevator?).
But i dont found many servers with Dungeons and Ruines (Castles) and can't tell much about this right now.

All in one a huge great update but personally im sceptic about laterns in CTI maps, could need something like "Team-Laterns" maybe. (i mean Blue and Red Laterns who emits only the own Team Light and to recapture like an Outpost. i dont know)
Anyway laterns have many pro and cons like the 'old' and 'new' lightning and is really a question of taste

But on the other hand caused this many new problems, or is impossible to realize.


résumé: More customization for server on small things? (old/new light, Day/night duration time, laterns on/off ?)

I really hope this post helps (at last with usefull ideas?) and cant hold back after 3 hours of thinking about this topic :(
like to help improve this great game

 

Like EJ said; A save or pause button would be great.

 

Is this topic supposed to be only about the Zombie Fortress mode or about the whole update? (including the changes to multiplayer balance and movement mechanics)

As I am not quite sure I'll start with a suggestion for the Zombie Fortress solo mode: It was nice if you could choose how to start. I did play it about 4 times by now and once I started alone, two times with two archers and one time with one archer. I think there should be a menu where you can choose between 'easy start' (two archers), 'medium start' (one archer) and 'hard start' (no archers).
Also pause, like others suggested. :)

 

Bot management could use some minor streamlining, I think; quick 'flicking' movements when trying to tell a particular bot to hold position usually results in just switching characters, which is unintuitive considering most do this for the other radius menus. Also, I'm not sure how it works exactly, but hovering over a bot and pressing the order key to control them is unreliable, especially in frantic situations; I think it'd be better if it selected whichever character was nearest to the cursor, assuming this isn't how it works already.

Personally, I don't like the aboveground tower bits; they often take too long to adapt for use, and even then are usually very suboptimal because of all the exploity player-made schematics. Considering they're usually in the middle of the map-where I would otherwise build a fort of my own--, I usually just nextmap until I get one with a clean surface. I think it'd help if they were made more appealing-on the metagame level-- or otherwise just reduced entirely to piles of rubble, which you could clear out with ease and do your own thing.

That's all I've noticed so far.

 

Please, make pathfinding for migrants better, they cant go up one stair to building (so, i cant get them to party), they say only and dont want to move. Very annoying sometimes.

 

I'm going to give some feedback, but I'll first say thanks to the devs; this new gamemode took my whole day away. I've never been so excitedly engrossed in a game like this in a long time. When I started the zombie fortress mode, I was amazed. A lot of things had changed, some issues had been resolved, and the game felt smooth and tight for the first time in a few months. I was literally chuckling and letting out "Ooohs" and "Aaahhs" of exclamation, because I was so enthralled by the new features; the new sounds (this really stood out to me), the hilarity of the migrant's behavior, the plethora of new workshops and crafts that come with them, rubble (falling through a patch of rubble really caught me off guard), and of course the zombies.

Issues:
-Respawning migrants might get mauled by zombies at spawn, then turn into zombies themselves. The migrants would continuously spawn, causing mass zombie reproduction.
-Sometimes migrants won't spawn at all, or only choose to spawn from one side of the map (typically the side with the most enemies, not sure why.
-As people have mentioned, migrants are difficult to deal with.
-Zombies are befuddled by notch walls.
-Zombies are befuddled by overhangs, depending on how they are built.
-If you build a tower out of castle wall and bridges, zombies will just loiter around at the bottom, not knowing how to attack you.
-Wraith pathfinding is strange.
-A box can be constructed around the spawns at each end of the map, stopping them from getting to your base.
-The game cannot be paused.
-Lighting glitches will occur, in which the lighting of sectors will not be updated unless the player approaches them.
-Sometimes wraiths won't change from their passive (floating lump) form to their explosive (glowing bee?) form at all, but will instead continuously play the hissing sound, and blow up without warning.
-Sometimes mechanics workshops will create two lanterns instead of one.
-The 'getting hurt' screen effect will occur when buying held items from workshops.
-The activation radius for portals is too large/touchy.
-Destroying portals is extremely difficult, as is destroying zombie-knights, and they seem to regenerate hit points almost immediately.
-Sometimes difficult enemies such as zombie-knights and wraiths will spawn on the first night, and in multitude.
-Sometimes a group of skeletons will spawn beside you as you start a game, and will stack, appearing to look as one.
-Sometimes migrant pairs will also stack, copying one another's movements exactly.
-Sometimes when migrants stand on doors or small holes, they will just stand there, and will not move no matter what.
-Sometimes zombies will just stop and stand in one place during the daytime.
-If you dug underground behind the zombie spawns (at the edge of the map), zombies will decide to wall to the map border, and climb down the side (and just disappearing, it seems).

I'll post some more later :P
Loving this build.

 

Well I just have to say I love this build.
First off, You cant build workshops at either end of the map (You can build the tiles, but you cant make it an actual workshop.)
There isnt really a 3 tile high jump, as previously stated. I stood in one spot for a minute trying to jump onto a drawbridge that was the third tile above the ground, and then i just vaulted up (glad vaulting still works.)
Drawbridges getting stuck open is still an issue, it cost me the longest game i had going by killing my only builder after my underground base had been flooded with knights :|
If you lose your builder and any building that could convert you to one, you're pretty much screwed for the rest of the game, and have to rely on outside parties for support. I think it would be great if parties had builders, only if they werent so derpy running into the heat of battle with just a hammer.
I love the lighting, and the lanterns, although when you have one there's always this "press c to throw" thing hovering above you, and sometimes the lantern sprite won't show up but you will still get the glowing effect.
BOULDERS ARE AWESOME.

 

The thing that annoys me most, is using doors are useless and dont lasts 2 seconds against the zombies. I end up just building a Y shape stone thing around some trees and playing up top. no one else makes it to the tower, and if they do, then they cant get in.

 

Freaking love it. Feels smooth and sane for the first time in months.

I didn't have time to play it much, but the issues I noticed so far:
- Need a save option.
- Going into menu should pause the game.
- Migrants are a pain since they can't get up notches, drawbridges or pretty much anything except straight ladders. Better pathfinding would be great.
- Controlling migrants in the heat of the battle is too slow at times; I suggest being able to select a migrant with LMB, and ordering it to go to a certain spot and stay there with RMB while the R menu still stays. This could be expanded to clicking on enemies will make them attack the enemy, clicking on resource would make them gather the resource, clicking yourself would make them follow you. I would find this so much smoother and easier to manage. There is a possibility you would click migrant on accident, so it could be two clicks to select a migrant. One LMB click on air to disable the selection.
- I had a bunch of skeletons spawning near me in the first five seconds of the match, wasn't hard to kill them, but it would be nice to see this fixed.

Yeh, that's pretty much what I noticed so far. Great job on this, I fell in love and can't wait to find a way to play more.

 

I think for the zombie update, I have a couple suggestions regarding the migrants. It would be better if the migrants spawned in our quarters instead of having them walk to our base. At this point of time, they pretty much have an iq level of a pug with the disability to understand the mobile aspects of the game. I personally like the fact you can make them stay but I prefer them to spawn in my base at an appropriate quarter. Also it would make sense that there was a female migrant as it can get extremely awkward when the green man turns into a female builder.

 

Though it was probably stated before :
Spawning bots in sandbox, workshops in sandbox, spawning zombies in sandbox, and changing class in sandbox.

 

To be fair I didn't find zombie mode as fun as I've expected.
It is epic and fun,but there are some things that make it frustratingly hard to enjoy.At least for me.

Here are some flaws :

-Migrants turning into zombies and flooding edges of the map.Even 1 zombie can screw you over as their numbers will increase exponentially.
-Common NPC has a good pathfinding(not wonderfull,but reliable),while Migrants has an awfull one.Could you make it to have the same coding,but instead of following player make them "follow" quarters?
-Extreme arrow cost.10 coins for 10 arrows?Given how many arrows zombies can soak up,it is overpriced.
-Bot knights shielding up when there is only 1 zombie infront of them.
-Archers prefer shooting common zombies instead of wraiths.

Here are some serious flaws(in my opinion):

-Bot system control.This system is frustrating.Make "all follow me" "all stop!" and "All gatrher here" commands.
Add mouse support.A player should be able to send 1 any closest nearby man(preferably knight) to targeted location in one click.

-The game forces you to go underground,which is the only way not to get overhelmed by wraiths.

-Incosistent difficulty.Wraiths and MegaZombies may appear on the first night?What?