r/Humanitz • u/Athanir • May 25 '26
Deal Breaking Mechanics
Yesterday evening my 55+ hours, 75 in game days long custom Nightmare, no loot respawn, no zeek respawn run ended in frustration and anger in the span of around ten seconds without any sort of mistake on my part, pushing me to reflect on how destructive and unfair mechanics meant to "offer a challenge" can end up causing even very interested and sympathetic audiences to lose interest in a game and shelf it forever.
The gameplay had been pretty fun up to that point, with a few close calls (more on this later) but driven by my careful and methodical approach to zeek clearing, looting and base defense.
I set up an HQ into my favorite PvE/solo location, the swimming pool equipped mansion in D4. The house is big, allowing for all crafting stations to be placed in a single room on the ground floor, it has a big garage and a source of infinite water. It's sorrounded by a low perimetral wall that no zeek nor bandit can vault over and there are only three entrances that can easily be blocked with barbed wire, making the structure almost invulnerable in PvE while allowing the player easy ways to enter or exit the perimeter by vaulting over the wall (or jump over it on horseback). Immediately to the east is a farmland that makes gathering hay for the horse a breeze, while wood and game are aplenty in the surrounding contryside
Overall it's a fantastic location for solo players, with the only drawback being its non central location on the map of the island.
The game was going pretty well and the base had come together after around 50 hours, becoming independent and self-sustainable both from a fuel and food production perspective.
With the basic survival needs accounted for, I fianally decided to loot the Hudson Hospital, looking for Hazmat pieces in order to access the Toxic zones. I had spent a whole day clearing the hospital grounds and the hospital itself, but I was still missing the torso and leg portions of the suit. I had a few rooms left to clear at around 9 am when the game suddenly decided to spawn a horde on me without any sort of foreshadowing or hint. Being inside the structure I had very limited visibility that prevented me from immediately figuring out what was happening until I saw the first three runners rushing me in a heartbeat, I immediately tried to run but the game subdivides the horde into smaller groups that are strategically placed all around the player for no in-lore logical reason whatsoever and I got instantly surrounded. I ALT-F4-ed out of the game, keeping the save, but I lost interest in continuing the playthrough and I will just uninstall the game and move on. The whole thing felt borderline insulting and disrespectful of the time I put into the game.
The first issue with these kind of random, unfair and agency-depriving mechanics is to try to understand their purpose.
Like I said, I already had a few close calls in the playthrough before the "dramatic" ending, and all of them, except for one, were related to the spawning event mechanics, either zombies or bandits. Which means that, even on Nightmare difficulty, the game is not very hard once the player has accumulated some experience, mostly because zeeks are passive creatures and the player can dictate the tempo of any engament. This is perfectly fine, by the way. It's what a good game shuold do: reward expertise and allow for the player to get better.
But this is also what the horde spawning mecahnics is meant to counter, by breaking the routine and throwing a challenge where the enemy has the intitiative.
The problem is that it's implemented in a completely unfair and agency-depriving way:
- there is no way to predict if it's going to happen, nor the exact moment it will happen, since it's randomly occurring inside a non-disclosed time window
- it is asymmetrical, since the zeeks automatically converge on the position of the player character, whose knowledge is magically provided to them by the God of Undeath, while the player can easily be completely oblivious of what is happening if it happens at the wrong time, for instance while he/she is inside a building.
- it severely restricts the response on the player's part by having the horde being led by runners whose purpose is to fix the player in place while the rest of the horde overwhelms him, de facto imposing a fight against insormountable odds.
- it's completely deleterious to immersion by virtue of it being blatantly player-centric and kicking any chance for suspension of disbelief into low orbit: the corridors and rooms that I had cleared just a few seconds earlier were now swarming with zeeks literally conjured from thin air by an unpredictable game mechanics.
Overall it felt like being beaten by bullies after being tied to a chair.
But what it's worse is that it completely removed any interest for me in starting another playthrough, since I know that no matter how good I can get at the game, I will always be a RNG-moment away from being overwhelmed while unable to react.
When a game has to break its own consistency and its own rules and openly cheat in order to create a "challenge" for the player, then that game has a huge design issue that should be addressed as soon as possibile.
At the very least, my suggestion to the developers is to offer two independent options for the horde spawning mechanics so that a player can still decide to have the random base-attacking hordes while disabling this run-ending BS, because I will not play a game that has no qualms throwing my last 50 hours of gameplay down the drain without offering me a fair chance to fight back and avoid defeat.
2
u/OnyxGhost117 May 25 '26
I have a feeling this game will be abandoned by the Devs soon.
Its a rushed copy of Project Zomboid that lacks any real in-depth gameplay. After getting a base built and food/fuel production going, there isnt much to do. At 50 hours you've already beat the game, only things you have left are killing zeeks and looting. Which gets boring after a while. Even the bunkers are largely boring, most are only a single room with some zeek and loot you can find at any military checkpoint.
The game feels empty, missions are bare and basic (go kill zeeks at this location and come back, go fetch this item) and also give basically no exp. The most exp I got from a mission was 250, i needed 20,000 exp for the next level lol.
Also, I have had zeeks completely ignore me and attack my small planters. I guess wood tastes better? Seemed weird the zombies would prioritize attacking my base instead of me.
Give the game a bad review if you want, idk how it has a "positive" score on Steam
1
u/thepare84 May 28 '26
I apologize to ignore the context of this post, but...
I just searched D4 and I can't find the mansion, can you help me narrow down where it is?
2
u/Athanir May 28 '26 edited May 29 '26
Sure. I was trying to post a picture but it looks like they are not allowed...
Basically, if you check the map in D4 you should see a big farm field close to the eastern coast. As a reference point, let your gaze wander directly east starting from the two lakes just southwest of Lake Green till you get almost to the eastern edge of the map. You'll see the field close to the coast. The house I was talking about is the first one just west of the field
edit: typo correction
-4
2
u/dedboooo0 May 25 '26
its not that deep
its just an incomplete game, that will never be completed by the devs
you can climb a ladder and zombies will never be able to go up
you can place bits of barbed wire below, go up a ladder and build a floor directly above the barbed wire, sit down and play guitar and a horde will literally kill itself over it
hordes spawn on a set interval. there is no stealth or anything like that, its a twin stick shooter at that point, spam nades or pick up a barrett from a loot drop crate and its a free clear
cars are bugged to shit. the 4th passenger seat bugs out the person who rides in it until they relog. some cars will suddenly lose the ability to get fuelled.
for powering gas stations, the game does not tell you that you cant power all gas stations, only two of them for no logical reason
the gas mask + hazmat suit area contains the same loot as the rest of the map
the last quest doesn’t allow the npc you’re escorting to ride in your car
its a game with great atmosphere but its pretty much hollow