First, I’d like to elaborate on how I saw things pre-hiatus. There were two opposing camps: hyper and hyper realism. Hyper wanted CBMs which you could easily install until you became a post apocalyptic god. Hyper-realism wanted a struggle, not just against the dead, but against life itself. Hyper wanted a one man army vs The Horde, hyper-realism wanted a common man vs himself. Occasionally, hyper-realism mistook difficulty for realism, like back when tetanus couldn’t be cured by antibiotics. And, occasionally, hyperism mistook pop-culture for humor.
Both styles had their flaws and strengths. Hyper was high octane, where every moment was a new OMG fright. Hyper-realism made you doubt and second guess each. Individual. Choice. It was explosiveness vs endurance, sudden brilliance vs planning. And, both were viable play styles incorporated with the base download. You simply picked your mods.
I played both. I had a hyper-realism character that I’d fostered for several months and an Arlington’s worth of hypers.
Now, it seems like hyper-realism has won, because, despite the wiki, I can’t disable washing my clothes. Washing clothes makes sense, because zombie yuck, but sometimes I’d like to drop into a character that doesn’t have to care about the things I’m already struggling with RL. The typical flaws of hyper-realism seem to have been mainstreamed. I could boil my clothes and scrub the shit out of them, or bleach them, or acid bath them (because jeans), but that doesn’t work, in the same way that tetanus could only be treated with royal honey there is only a limited realism with which to solve things.
Feels like there are plenty of games, in fact almost all of the other ones, where you can become a post apocalyptic god. There are fewer choices for hyper-realism. For myself I enjoy the difference.
Hyper-realism isn’t so bad. It just makes sure that you realize how OP cars really are, that meleeing horrific mutated monstrosities is a horrible idea and you’re better off catching it in a bear trap and blowing them up with explosives made from your own manure or that disease was by far the greatest killer in human history.
It’s still possible to mod out filthy clothes, AFAIK. That being said, the core game is definitely moving into a very specific niche experience that’s not for everyone (including me, I play pre-Nested Containers for that reason).
I’m not sure why filthy clothes always gets such ire.
You don’t need gear from zombies, and your actual laundry never gets dirty. Until it can be implemented in such a way that laundry washing happens in the background without work from the player, we have no plans to change this. In most of my playthroughs I don’t even bother doing laundry until very far along when I need extra salvaged Kevlar. Filthy is a minor play balance element to keep zombie salvage from being too easily accessible.
huh? isn’t it planned to eventually shift the game in the direction where clothes/armor made via tailoring are worse than things you actually find in the world? And most of the clothes/armor you find are (previously)worn by zombies, ergo filthy.
I’m fairly new and play 0.E2 stable (which is before containers), and yes, I have to wash the clothing taken from zombies, which makes perfect sense to me. I also don’t have to wash my character’s or companions’ clothes, which is a relief. This means I have to wash some items once, which I find perfectly OK and a reasonable balance.
Most of the filthy stuff I take from zombies aren’t for wearing, but for “spare parts” to repair the actual gear, and once I got myself a washing machine that ceased to become an issue (I believe I wasn’t too happy early on when I found some item that more or less used up all of my [at that time precious] soap).
The stuff you pull off of zombies are in a horrible shape, and you need a fair level of tailoring to repair them up to a usable level, while the best gear I’ve found is tucked away in places explored (ANBC suits can be pulled from zombies occasionally, though).
Please implement more ways to wash clothes, that’s the reason why it hasn’t been implemented.
It’s not because some people are fetishizing over there being one and only one way to wash clothes and it being hard, it’s because the existing way is satisfactory enough, and nobody has been bothered enough to add more ways.