Old player - 0.E. Feedback

Game Talk The Bunker
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Hello everyone. After a quite long hiatus (last played in 2016/2017) i returned for a game of cata. I always build the latest experimental (and keep updating it ~weekly), so my feedback is based on that.

My survivor is an 8/8/8/8 guy with no martial arts, but some good traits (indefatigable, night vision, quick). I played the island prison scenario (with some swimming skill used to escape ASAP). Skillrust is IntCap, while item spawnrate is 75% & zed spawnrate at 90%.

I’ve finally reached the mid game, with fairly high crafting skills but no exploration of specially dangerous places (such as labs & frozen labs) yet. I stayed within a city though, and looted quite a lot of stuff (and books), reaching mid-summer of the 1st year (just before the first crops harvest).

Initial impressions:

  1. I like the new nutrition/hunger system. I think it fits well with the game and adds to immersion, even though it is definitely not punishing: One could quickly consume a lot of calories of food that would otherwise go rotten, to become overweight/obese, then go about “hungry” for quite a bit, not having to worry too much about food. I don’t think i would want it to become punishing, but i’m not certain yet about how (or if) harder it should be.

  2. I like the new medical/healing system. It prevents too reckless play, since healing is not fast at all, or you’d have to consume medical supplies and have a mid-skill in 1st-aid. Though once you get enough hydrogen peroxide loot and 1st-aid skill, it gets much easier. But at the start, this alone makes cities pretty dangerous (which is good).

  3. Early game is tons of fun: You are really fighting for survival and have to make decisions on when, where and what to fight.
    Just after setting a permanent home, i had to sacrifice my fully functioning but battered electric car (still a very lucky find) to take down a master zed (and his retinue), before he overwhelmed me, since they decided to camp just out of my new base.

  4. I think the kitchens and bathrooms have too much clutter: I mean, i play with 75% item spawn, and still it is a chaos over there. Are all these (mostly useless) stuff really needed for immersion?
    Sure i understand that IRL every kitchen has most/all of them (and loads more probably), but this implementation does not apply to the rest of cata. Is the dev’s view that only performance reasons stop doing this everywhere later on?

  5. I’m starting to be afraid of the zeds with armor: I like to melee unless this is not an option (see turrets), but, with kevlar zeds, skeletal juggernauts, kevlar hulks, this is quite hard.
    I’ve started using an estoc + pits to take out the last two, because nothing else works. I could probably also use a mace, but i like swords. :grinning:
    Besides, 40 pierce, piercing strike, parry, is fine also for unarmored zeds, so long as you don’t fight too many at once. I’d never think to use an estoc in 0C / 0D (broadsword / katana being the arms of choice for a loong time), but i actually love it.

  6. I’m getting more and more afraid of zed evolution. I’ve set the rate to 6 (from the default of 4 - so it should be slower), but i think i’m barely keeping up. A combination of high-end zeds, like incandescent husk, kevlar hulk, etc., with mid-end ones, is extremely dangerous. Thank god for the ANBC suit. I’m not sure i’ll be able to keep up for much longer if this evolution trend ramps up after the 1st year.
    Or i’ll have to resort to deathmobile tactics (that i don’t really like).

  7. I’m afraid of the combat skill progression: My melee skills are at 3-4, which is sufficient for now, but probably not for later (eg. vs bio-operators). And those skills level very slowly and there are no books to get them higher than 3-4 (if that). I don’t know if i should grind them or not worry about it.
    At 3-4 they are quite effective vs mid-threat zed types, when combined with good arms, though.

  8. Until now, food is not an issue. 1st spring has loads of food from before the cataclysm. Summer is easy, and i have already planted quite a lot of seeds, so i’d expect not having any issue until next spring (when i will have a foodco & freezers so that i can preserve everything).

Verdict: Very happy with the progress, and i will keep trying/sampling the new content.

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Yes, it is.

but this implementation does not apply to the rest of cata. Is the dev’s view that only performance reasons stop doing this everywhere later on?

It’s lack of people who could do this hard and thankless job.

3 Likes
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I see.

So then by extrapolating, you would like to have stuff like dishes, napkins, mousepads, remote controllers, souvenirs, pins, scanner/printer machines, board games, old pc hardware, etc. etc. in mostly every house, to near-IRL scale? The hoarder inside me panics at the very thought!

Ok, i mean, i think i understand the rationale: immersion + by adding them, some use will be found for them eventually, which probably enriches the game long-term (and i guess cata is not that far from that point anyway), but, this seems too much hard work for something that is close to being out-of-scope (in the sense that the gameplay improvement is minor).

I guess i just validated your answer, that it is a hard and thankless job. :slight_smile:
Thanks for the reply.

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Mind your focus and it should be easier. Get your focus up, go fight a bit, then back off when your focus (and stamina) gets low. Also disable other skills on the @ screen so they don’t consume your focus.
Driving is the usual suspect, but if you want to train, e.g. piercing, and your weapon has some bashing, then turn off bashing, and maybe turn off dodging (no longer a god stat) and melee and anything else that might be sucking focus up, and piercing will start going up a lot easier.

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Ah, i read about this trick. I admit it makes sense with capped skill leveling.
On the other hand, this feels “gamey”. Would this be the “designed” manner of skill leveling?