State of Decay 2 - Time is your worst enemy

More like, take away the coffee and the world turns into zombies :)

Ha! Good ones.

You go girl, both of youse.

Seconded!

I think I’m an outlier here, but I am just not liking this game. I want to. I really did like the first one, but some of the things I didn’t care for in the original have come back doubly in this one. I have rage quit twice now, and can’t see going back in. Here’s my biggest complaints:

  • Respawning zombies. I get why they do it, but I just can’t be ok with it. It’s killing my immersion and making me quite frustrated. If I spend 10 minutes wiping out the zombies all around my base, then drive 1/4 mile down the road, turn around and come back, there should not be 6 zombies milling about around my base again. I guess I’m just too used to making progress in games now, and I really want to feel that every time I wipe out some zombies, I’m doing so. But when they just respawn every time you go a short distance, I never feel like any progress has been made at all.

  • Zombies spawning out of no where. Again this is one that happened in the original, but it’s just really bothering me this time. Every time I pull up the map while driving, and my car slows, here come 3 or 4 zombies out of thin air to jump on my car. Or if I go to clear a house and make sure to check all around the outside clearing zombies, as soon as I enter it, here come a bunch through the windows and doors. It’s just maddening.

  • Companions dying. This never really happened to me in SoD1, but twice now in this sequel while on a mission my companion has died during a fight. They were properly equipped, but just couldn’t fight well enough to fend off 3 or 4 zombies attacking them. Of course I’m dealing with my own 3 or 4 so I couldn’t really help. I’ve also had the character I was controlling die once too. I was in a situation where I couldn’t move, or jump or duck out of the way thanks to some weird hitbox issue.

  • Cars made of glass. I don’t recall this in 1, but I’ve had a few cars blow up on me now from running into a pole or something. Yeah, sure they should take damage and all, but not blow up from 1 crash. This is especially maddening given how slippery the cars are when turning.

  • Pacing. Again, not sure if it was like this in 1, but man I am so sick of getting 2 or 3 calls for help every time I set out to do something. It’s so frustrating. I choose a character who has a personal goal, and immediately upon hitting the road towards it, I get a bunch of whining over the radio that someone needs help. If I don’t go help, they get all butt-hurt and leave, costing me a potential ally or new companion. If I do run around and help all these people, my character gets worn out and never gets to start their personal quest.

  • The Jank. Oh the jank is so bad in this one. Why can’t I just pick up that rucksack on the ground? Why does my companion have to stand right over it, causing me to start dialogue with them when I just want to pick it up. Every time! Why do I have to play pixel hunt to find the appropriate spot to stand to refuel my car? Why do I have to stutter step near the top of the ladder to access it so I don’t plummet to my death?

I’m probably playing this all wrong, as so many of you seem to be really enjoying it. I’m just glad I got this in the Microsoft Game Pass thing, since there’s no refunds in M$ Store.

What do you mean? You can totally refund MS purchases.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10558/microsoft-account-refunds-for-purchases-and-subscriptions

No idea how they treat opened physical game discs, but:

Digital goods
Most apps, games, movies, TV shows, and books purchased in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 or Xbox One are non-refundable unless the offer or applicable law states that you’re eligible for a refund.

Yeah, I think I’m wrong. I’ve seen the option to request a refund but that may be because I’m in the insider program.

You can and have always been able to get a refund. the key is to call them, and not make a habit of it. The more you have bought in the past the more lenient they are on it, but basically the first time you call to try I would be very surprised if they don’t refund you.

I activated my game pass, and started this download.

But man, at the rate this is downloading from the Windows Store, it’s going to take all night, maybe even all weekend.

Maybe playing this on the PC tonight is not on the cards. I could download it on Xbox and try it there once the family goes to bed. Games of this size usually take less than 15 minutes to download on Xbox.

Appreciate your thoughts on the game. A lot of those things bother me too. The zombies that teleport into an area you just cleared seems really lazy to me. I’l wait on this one.

I haven’t played the second game, but I take issue with this as a criticism of the game. In the first one, you never controlled the map. The map was controlled by the corpses. But you got familiar with the layout of the land and the behaviour of its fauna, and eventually learned how to carve yourself a place into this world. Those times were you felt overconfident and got in over your head always meant some thrilling survival action.
Persistence and systematic eradication of the zombies would have made State of Decay a much different game, and one I wouldn’t have cared for.

Well how do you feel about how Rebuild handles population and migration? You can clear an area but periodic hordes then threaten you from the neighboring areas.

A little gotcha I just discovered (if I’m diagnosing it correctly). When clearing a building, take care to drop extra rucksacks well outside the radius. Otherwise when you clear it (i.e. of all zombies and searchables) it will reset as cleared and delete the rucksacks.

At least, that’s what I think just happened to me. Lost two rucksacks that had been sitting on a porch for no more than a minute.

I decided to refund this (which I’m guessing may be futile) largely based on the stuff you described. The entire thing smacks of laziness. There are the same bugs from the first game still rearing their head 5 years later, that is inexcusable IMHO.

Also I don’t really mind the zombies are legion basically and continue to creep in after you “clear” an area but the literal teleportation within viewing distance is comically lame. Like they just beamed down from another dimension 10 ft away from you. Especially the ones that appear when opening boxes etc. too loudly.

Likewise, the base defense leaves much to be desired with the non-functional watch towers. The game is a step backward in many ways from the first game and other than map size and slightly updated graphics adds nothing new to the equation.

I never played the expansions for the first game so I’m inclined to pick up Year One for like what? 7 dollars I think you can it now in bundles than dropping 30 on this turd that needs polishing, big time.

I must confess I haven’t enjoyed any other zombie themed game besides State of Decay. Probably because its take is along the lines of “it’s all over”?
It’s also the only openworld game I really enjoyed. So it’s in a very special spot for me, and may be why I feel weirdly protective of what I feel are its unique mechanics.
I played the first Rebuild a bit, but like I would have played any city builder casually, with little regard to what was going on. Some jerk would probably tell me I played it wrong, and to put that difficulty slider to the max immediately — but I feel safe on these forums.

I don’t know if you saw in earlier this thread or another about SoD1, but all the items @Spect mentioned rang true for me and yet I loved SoD1 and played the heck out of it. I will probably give SoD2 a shot, but I am familiar with zombie lore where they can walk, sometimes run, but not really teleport. The same thing happened to me in Far Cry 2…there’s a good game in there, but I’d clear an outpost but come back five minutes later and have to retake it…very tedious.

I absolutely love the teleporting mechanic. Not because of the teleport (I am not that silly!), but because of the way it happens: if you leave the zombies be, humans and zeds can all get along quite fine. If you kick the ants’ nest though, it will bite you back. I really enjoyed the game for asking me to do what, I guess, most people would do: sneak around and try to avoid confrontation unless forced, because it is tiring to fight, and you don’t want to ruin your health. I was quite surprised to see on his streams of both games that Tom was so reliant on guns: I barely ever used them at all during all my playtime, because of the escalation they brought — firing them sure brought action to Tom’s streams.
I didn’t feel pain or frustration around the zombies spawning. It felt always fair when it happened, even if I felt panic when, in some context, I wasn’t in control at all.
Your post makes me very curious about Far Cry 2, I must confess! If you are asked to retake those outposts each time, I understand the frustration, but can’t you simply run by them? That is that difference I enjoy in SoD.

You can absolutely bypass the outposts in Far Cry 2 if you consider your route to your target, and especially is you make smart use of river boats.

Yeah, I don’t really get the complaint either. The zombie menace is just there in SoD. It always will be. You’re not getting rid of it, you’re scraping together a living, which can disappear in an instant if you let your guard down or get too tired.

I think the problems are more about respawn rate and teleporting. You can clear an area and have no zombies anywhere near a building, but once you go into the building and start making noise there are suddenly zombies? Nobody has issues with zombies migrating and slowly overrunning areas you previously cleared, that’s all part of a zombie apocolypse. They just shouldn’t be magically summoned as if the whole game has a Necromancer or bastard GM behind it